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THE STORY HISTORY OF FRANCE 




Photograph by Paul Thompson 

GEORGE CLEMENCEAU 

At the present time (1919), seventy-seven years old and yet known as "The 
l^rand Young Man of Europe," one of the half-dozen supreme figures of the World 
War. After a stormy life of more than the allotted span, in and out of government, 
he became Prime Mimster of France in November, 1917, when the aspect of war 
was blackest. His success as French Premier is world history, and his personality 
in the Peace Conference one of the most vivid. 



THE STORY HISTORY 
OF FRANCE 

From the Reign of Clovis, ^81 A.D., to the 
Signing of the Armistice, November, 1918 



BY 



JOHN BONNER 



ILLUSTRATED 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 






AiJi] 20 i9!9 



The Stort History op France 



Copyright, 1893, 1919, by Harper & Brothera 
Printed in the United States of America 



F-T 



5Ci.A529G90 



\ 



^^' / 



TO 

SEWALL BOARDMAN 

IN THE HOPE THAT HE MAT BE TEMPTED TO READ LARGER 

AND BETTER WORKS ON THE SUBJECT 

THIS LITTLE BOOK IS 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 



PUBLISHER'S NOTE 

Originally published in 1893, under the title of A ChiWs 
History of France, this excellent compendium of the salient 
events in French history, particularly those distinguished for 
their dramatic and romantic character, continues to find read- 
ers; it seems advisable, therefore, to reissue the book in a new 
and enlarged edition. 

Mr. Bonner closed his narrative with the end of the Franco- 
Prussian War. Three additional chapters have been pre- 
pared, dealing with the principal events between the found- 
ing of the Third Republic in 1871 and the signing of the 
armistice in 1918. 

The change in title may be justified by the following quo- 
tation from the author's original preface: 

"The title of 'Child's History' is not exact. This history 
is not intended exclusively for young children; it will com- 
mend itseK likewise to boys and girls who are ready to enter 
college." And he might have added: And also to the general 
reader, who is interested in life rather than in maps and dates, 
and who prefers real men and women to political abstractions. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEK PAGE 

I. Clovis, First King of France 1 

II. Brunehault and Fredegonde 11 

III. Pepin the Little . . . . < 22 

IV. Charlemagne 26 

V. Louis the Gentle 35 

VI. HiNCKMAR THE ArCHBISHOP 41 

VII. The Feudal System 49 

VIII. The End of the World 54 

IX. King and Pope 57 

X. Robert the Devil 63 

XL Philip the First 66 

XII. The First Crusade 69 

XIII. A Tale of Two Fair Women 78 

XIV. Philip Augustus 84 

XV. France Six Hundred and Seventy Years Ago . 90 

XVI. Saint-Louis 95 

XVII. The Sicilian Vespers 103 

XVIII. Philip the Handsome 107 

XIX. Sorcery and Delusion 114 

XX. France Humbled 119 

XXI. Robbers Reign 126 

XXII. Bertrand Duguesclin 131 

XXIII. A Mad King 135 

XXIV. Joan of Arc , 141 

XXV. Louis the Eleventh 149 

XXVI. The Great Lady 156 

XXVII. Louis the Twelfth 161 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTT^!^ PAGE 

XXVIII. Francis the First 170 

XXIX. Diana of Poitiers . . , 179 

XXX. The Guises 182 

XXXI. Catherine of Medicis 186 

XXXIL ]\Iore Wars and Murders 195 

XXXIIL Henry the Fourth 203 

XXXIV. Cardinal Richelieu 212 

XXXV. Cardinal Mazarin 224 

XXXVI. Louis the Fourteenth 230 

XXXVII. More Persecution of the Huguenots . . . 239 

XXXVIII. The Regent Orleans 244 

XXXIX. Louis the Fifteenth 250 

XL. Louis the Sixteenth 258 

XLI. Mirabeau 268 

XLII. The King's FlighT; Imprisonment, and Death 277 

XLIII. Marat and Charlotte Corday 291 

XLFV. Robespierre 298 

XLV. The Last of the Assembly 309 

XLVL Bonaparte 316 

XLVIL The First Consul 323 

XL VIII. The Emperor Napoleon . . . . . ,. . . 331 

XLIX. France under Napoleon 337 

L. Josephine . 344 

LI. The War in Spain 351 

LII. Downfall of Napoleon 356 

LIII. Waterloo 364 

LIV. The Bourbons 378 

LV. A Citizen King 384 

LVI. Another Republic 390 

LVII. The Second Empire 393 

LVIII. The Third Republic 402 

LIX. The World War 408 

LX. Victory 415 

Index 419 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



George Clemenceau 

A Roman Aqueduct Page 3 

Clovis, King of the Franks 5 

Burial of a Gaul in Olden Time. . 7 

A New King of the Franks 9 

Head of King Clovis 10 

Clotaire Kills his Nephews IS 

Chlociomir's Son Submits to Ton- 
sure 15 

Deatn of Brunehault 11 

Throne of Dagobert 20 

Chapel of St. John at Poitiers ... 23 
A kmg of France Travelling. ... 27 

Baptizing the Saxons 29 

Roland the Paladin at Ronces- 

valles 31 

The Normans Ascending a French 

Kiver 36 

A Noble's Castle, with Town at 

its Base 39 

The Normans Attacking the City 

of Paris 43 

Charles the Bald and his Priests . 47 
A Noble's Castle in the Mountains . 50 

l)ef ending a Battlement 52 

Swearing on Relics 59 

Queen Constance Strikes out a 

Priest's Eye 62 

Peter the Hermit Preaching a 

Crusade 71 

Attacking the Saracens in their 

Mosque 73 

The First Crusade led by Peter 

the Hermit 75 

A Minstrel Singing to the Court 

of Eleanor of Aquitaine 79 

Crusaders Fording a River 81 



Frontispiece. 

Fighting the Saracens . . . .Page 85 
Mmiatuie Portrait of King Louis 

IX 95 

Castle of Angers, Built by Saint- 
Louis 96 

Isabella Sends Two Ruffians to 

Kill the King 97 

Saint-Louis Holding Court in the 

Woods 101 

The Temple 109 

Hanging a Sorcerer in the Mid- 
dle Ages 117 

Assault on a Walled Town. ... 121 

Charge of the French Knights. 123 
Arrest of Charles of Navarre at 

Rouen 127 

Church at St. Denys 132 

Interior of Church at St. Denys. 134 

Isabeau of Bavaria 136 

Duke of Burgundy 138 

Joan of Arc 141 

Joan of Arc in Battle 145 

The Cathedral at Rouen 147 

Louis XI 149 

Charles VIIL Crossing the Alps 158 

Chateau d'Amboise 160 

Chevalier Bayard Defending a 

Bridge 163 

Chevalier Bayard . 165 

Portal of the Chateau des Blois . 167 

Monument to Chevalier Bayard, 168 

Francis I. (from a coin) 170 

Francis 1 173 

The Burning of Heretics 175 

Tortures of the Inquisition .... 177 

An Execution at Amboise 183 



ILLtTSTRATlONS 



Duke of Guise Page 184 

Catherine de' Medici 187 

Charles IX 189 

Admiral Coligni 190 

The Three Colignis 191 

Massacre of St. Bartholomew . . 193 

Henry III 197 

Murder of Guise 199 

Assassination of Henry III 201 

Medal of Henry IV. and Mary 

of Medicis ^ 203 

Chateau of Henry lY 205 

Henry IV. of France 209 

Cardinal Richeheu 212 

Last Meeting of the States-Gen- 
eral 221 

The Holy Chapel at Paris 223 

Parliament in Session 225 

Barricades at Porte St. Antoine 
in the Civil War of the Fronde 229 

Louis XIV 230 

Madame de Maintenon 235 

The Bastile 243 

Caricature of John Law 247 

Fan of Louis XV. Period 252 

Voltaire 255 

Jean Jacques Rousseau 257 

Louis XVL (from a coin) 258 

Lyons 261 

Breton Peasants 263 

Louis XVI 265 

Mirabeau 268 

Breaking into the Invalides 271 

Storming the Bastile 273 

Death of Governor Delaunay, of 

the Bastile 275 

House of the Jacobin Club 279 

Storming the Tuileries 281 

Sacking the Royal Arsenal 283 

Massacre at the Abbaye 285 

Parting between the King and 

his Family , 287 

Execution of Louis XVI 289 



Charlotte Corday in Prison. Page 293 

The Coast of Normandy 295 

Hotel de Ville 297 

Robespierre 298 

Marie Antoinette 301 

The Dauphin in the Temple 303 

Executions of the Girondists ... 305 
Memorial Cup and Saucer of the 

Guillotine 307 

Hat Worn in 1795 310 

A Republican Addressing the 

People 311 

Napoleon Bonaparte 313 

Madame de Stael 315 

The Directory (from a print of 

the time) 320 

The Three Consuls (from a 

medal) 323 

Execution of the Duke of En- 

ghien 327 

Church of Notre Dame, at Paris 329 

The Coast of Boulogne 331 

Medal of Napoleon, King of Italy 337 

Paris from Notre Dame 339 

Josephine, Wife of Napoleon I. 345 
Marie Louise of Austria, Second 

Wife of Napoleon I 347 

The Palace of Fontainebleau . . 349 

Port of Havre 353 

St. Cloud 356 

Retreat of the French 361 

Avignon 365 

Louis XVIII 366 

Talleyrand 367 

Tomb of Napoleon at St. Helena 373 

Luxembourg 375 

Marshal Ney 377 

Marquis de Lafayette 381 

The Boulevards Fifty Years ago 385 
Louis Napoleon as a Young Of- 
ficer 393 

Clearing the Paris Streets 395 

Napoleon III 399 



THE STORY HISTORY OF FRANCE 



THE 
STORY HISTORY OF FRANCE 

Chapter I 

CLOVIS, FIRST KING OF FRANCE 
A.D. 481-511 

Fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago, there came pad- 
dling across the Rhine, in canoes and on rafts, bands of 
tall warriors, some of them with painted bodies and wild 
beasts' skins on their shoulders, others in gaudy woollen 
stuffs, some with iron breast-plates, many with gold chains 
round their necks, and all armed with either sword, axe, 
spear, mace, or pike. They were called Franks, and came 
from the forests of Germany, and the fens of the valley of 
the Danube. They were going to the country which was 
then called Gaul, and which after them was called France. 

Gaul was at this time the home of a number of races 
which bore the names of Gauls, Celts, Beiges, Goths, Visi- 
goths, Bretons, Iberians, and Burgundians, spoke the same 
or nearly the same language, and were brave, fierce, and 
rough. Among them was a sprinkling of Romans, and 
some of the young men of the native races had been edu- 
cated at Rome, spoke Latin, wore clothes cut in the Ro- 
man fashion, and were mannered like the Romans. Some 
five hundred years before, the country had been con- 
quered by the Romans under their valiant general, Julius 
1 



2 [481-511 

Csesar, and had become a Roman province. It was for the 
most part a wild country, with much thicket, forest, marsh, 
swamp, and bare rock ; cold fogs were frequent in the 
north ; there were but few roads or bridges ; to go from 
place to place travellers had to ride or trudge over bridle 
paths, through thick woods which were infested by wolves 
and bears, as well as by robbers and murderers. But on 
the plains and in the river valleys, especially in the south, 
were vineyards, orchards, and fields of waving grain; and 
in the towns, of which there were quite a number, stood 
theatres, circuses, aqueducts, churches, and temples. For 
the Romans improved every country they conquered. 

They had had desperate work to conquer the Gauls. 
Julius Caesar, the greatest general they ever had, spent 
nine whole years in fighting them. It looked as if they 
could not be conquered. The work was not done till Caesar 
had killed two millions of them, and till the rivers ran south 
to the Mediterranean and north to the British Channel red 
with blood. Even the women fought like men, and died 
by their husbands' sides. There is a place in France which 
bears the dreadful name of Pourrieres ; if you go to see it, 
you will be told that a whole tribe — men, women, and chil- 
dren — were there butchered by the Roman soldiers, and 
their bodies left to rot in the sun. 

At last, when the best fighting-men of every tribe had 
been killed, and the chiefs — great, tall, splendid fellows, 
with blue eyes and tawny hair, and heads which towered 
above the Romans — had been sent to Rome to march in 
Caesar's triumphal procession with their hands chained be- 
hind their backs, the Romans felt that Gaul was theirs. 
The fighting was indeed over ; the Gauls submitted to be 
ruled by Roman governors, and began in a feeble way to 
call themselves Romans. 

It was a bad time to become a Roman. Soon after then, 
the great Roman Empire began to fall into ruin. It was 
crumbling to bits. Barbarians were swooping down on its 
borders and sacking its cities. Savages were bursting 



481-511] 3 

into its palaces and robbing them of their riches. Roman 
armies had lost their pluck, and instead of beating the enemy- 
back gave him money and jewels to go away. Province 



A ROMAN AQUEDUCT 

after province was starting for itself, and declaring that it 
was not Roman any more. Meanwhile, whether the Empire 
lived or died, the gay people who lived at Rome went on 
leading Inxm-ious lives, keeping hundreds of slaves to wait 
on them, eating food and drinking wine which were brought 
from distant countries, wearing beautiful clothes, spending 
millions of money, and taxing the submissive provinces to 
get it. One of the most submissive and the most griev- 
ously taxed was Gaul. 

Every acre of land was taxed, every tree, everv vine, 
every house and cow and pig and sheep, every barn and 



4 [481-511 

cart and plough ; a man had to pay a tax for the wife he 
lived with, and a tax for every child she bore. Those who 
resisted the tax-gatherer were scourged with whips. The 
air echoed the groans and shrieks of women who were tor- 
tured to make them confess whether their husbands had 
property, and where it was hidden. After long endurance 
of this frightful oppression, the great heart of the Gauls 
broke. Caesar had taught them that they could not fight 
Rome. They just stopped tilling their fields and pruning 
their vines. They left their houses, fled into the woods 
where the cruel tax-gatherer could not reach them, and fell 
to robbing: travellers and towns to feed their children. If 
this state of things had gone on, Gaul would have become 
a wilderness, the abode of wild beasts and men as wild as 
they. 

It was then that the Franks came sailing across the Rhine 
into Gaul. They were a fighting people, hating work and 
loving war. They elected their king by vote : the strong- 
est and bravest warrior was chosen, and was carried round 
on a shield on the arms of soldiers, w^ho paraded him before 
the tribe. You will find in the histories of the Franks the 
names of several kings who are said to have led the Franks 
to battle — Pharamond, Clodion, Merovee, Childeric, and 
others. But I cannot feel sure that they were real person- 
ages. I am afraid that some of them — Pharamond espe- 
cially — were invented long afterward, when the descend- 
ants of the Franks, like some people in our own day, had 
a fancy to prove that they sprang from very ancient line- 
age indeed. 

But there is no doubt of the reality of Clovis, or Chlodo- 
veg as some of the old books call him. You may feel quite 
sure that he came paddling over the Rhine into Gaul at 
the head of a body of Franks in or about the year of Our 
Lord four hundred and eighty-one. The people were very 
glad to see him — all except the tax-gatherers. With these 
he had a short, sharp way of dealing. When a tax-gatherer 
^ot in his way, he sent one of his captains to argue with 



481-511] 5 

him ; and it was noticed that after the argument the tax- 
gatherer had nothing more to say. The Frank had per- 
suaded him with his axe. 

A few friends of Rome tried in a feeble way to 
oppose the march of the Franks, but Clovis per- 
suaded them, too, with pike and sword ; and the 
poor people came out of their hiding-places, and 
wrung the hands of the strangers, and bade them 

welcome. Nothing that Clo- 
vis could do to them could 
be worse than the oppression 




CLOYIS, KING OF THE FRAIiKS 



6 [481-511 

they had endured from the Romans. They made no ob- 
jection when Clovis proclaimed himself master of town 
after town, valley after valley, province after province. 
So, after a time, he came to rule over a larger country than 
any Gaulish chief had ever swayed— and it was a co.aitry 
which, now that the people ventured to go to work once 
more on their farms, was worth governing. He calliod him- 
self King of the Franks, but I think you had better remem- 
ber him by the title which fits him best — that of the 
First King of France. 

In larger books than this you will find that ti>fi Gauls 
submitted to Clovis because of his religion. At that time, 
in Gaul the old, cruel religion of the Druids, who met in 
groves, and, I am afraid, sacrificed children on stone altars, 
had died out, except in the northwestern corner of the 
country. In the place of it, four religions existed. The 
Franks had a weird, mystical religion, with gods liamed 
Thor and Odin and a goddess named Freya. Some of the 
Romans, and the Gauls who had been to Rome, dung to 
their old heathen religion, with Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Ve- 
nus, and Juno. And there were two kinds of Christianity. 
One of these Clovis said he professed, and he also said that 
it was very superior to the other kind. I do not think, my- 
self, that he troubled himself much about either, or that he 
lay awake nights thinking about religion in any shajDe. 

But when he found that rich fields on the Loire were 
owned by a tribe which professed one kind of Christianity, 
I can quite understand why he adopted the other kind — be- 
cause his conscience would not allow him to permit such 
very fine fields to remain in the possession of people who 
w^ere no better than unbelievers. As a good churchman, he 
explained to himself that he was bound to turn out the 
wrong kind of Christians, and to put in their j^lace the 
right kind, namely, his own friends and followers — which is 
precisely what he did. 

Again, down in Languedoc, in southern France, there 
was a tribe of Visigoths who grew grapes and wheat on a 




BURIAL OF A GAUL EST OLDEN TIME 

lovely plain. They, too, were so stupid that they professed 
the wrong kind of Christianity. When Clovis proposed 
to go south to argue with them his soldiers hung back, for 
the Visigoths had the reputation of being fierce fighters. 
But Clovis had them attend church at Tours, and pay par- 
ticular attention to the first words Avhich they heard from 
the priest who was chanting psalms. Just as they entered 
the priest cried in a loud chant, " Thou hast given me the 
necks of mine enemies." The soldiers took the hint and 
marched, and the Visigoths lost their lands. Of course 
the priest had not been told to select that particular text. 



8 [481-511 

No, no, nothing of the kind. But it happened to suit the 
king's purpose very nicely indeed. 

There came a time when Clovis reigned over nearly all 
Finance, except a corner in the south where he permitted 
the remnant of the Visigoths to remain, a small corner in 
the northwest where the brave Bretons fought stoutly for 
their homes and beat back the Franks over and over again, 
and the great duchy of Burgundy in the Rhone valley, 
which was ruled by a duke whose daughter was Clovis's 
wife. From the Pyrenees to the Rhine the country was all 
his, and the fame of his power spread so far and wide that 
the Romans made him a consul — which was not in those 
days so much of an honor as it had once been. 

But he w^as not satisfied. On the river Rhine there was 
a small kingdom round what is now the German city of 
Cologne. Clovis sent word to the king's son, " Thy father 
is old ; he halts with his lame foot. If he should die, thou 
shalt have his kingdom and my friendship." The prince 
understood — he murdered his father that night. Then said 
Clovis, "It is well. Show thy treasures to my envoys, and 
I will acknowledge thee king." The poor fool opened a 
chest full of gold-pieces, and, bending over, thrust his arm 
into it ; whereupon one of the envoys standing behind him 
split his head open with an axe and carried off the treas- 
ure. The people of Cologne, who were worthy of such a 
prince, raised Clovis on a buckler and proclaimed him king ; 
and a Church chronicler, Gregory of Tours, declared that 
he was "successful in all things, because his heart was 
right before God." 

In those days Paris was a small town, of no particular 
beauty. Clovis chose Soissons to be his capital, and he sur- 
rounded himself with a joyous court. Many of his own 
people were rough barbarians, who gorged themselves with 
meat and drink, fought from morning to night, and thought 
nothing of knifing their right-hand neighbor at the dinner- 
table — monstrous fellows with long yellow hair and long 
arms and roaring voices. But at the court of Soissons 



481-511] 



9 



there were also gentlemen of polish and learning from 
Rome, or from the French cities in which Roman fashions 
had been adopted ; likewise j)riests who had been well edu- 
cated, and whom Clovis loved to gather about him — I sus- 
pect because their presence gave respectability to his court. 
That it certainly needed. He had taken possession of a 
fine old Roman palace at Soissons, and lived in it — gener- 
ally sleeping on the bare boards with his dogs by his side^ 




A NEW KING OF THE FRANKS 



At his dinner, a roasted ox, or wild boar, or two or three 
sheep were served whole ; the guests cut off chunks of 
meat with their knives, and held them in their fingers while 
tJjey gnawed them, Wine vas plentiful, and boys went 



10 



[481-511 



round with cups, out of which each drank in turn. It was 
the general custom to get drunk ; and after the meal to 
swagger and boast, as drunken men will. The Gauls had a 
rule that the thigh-bone of the animal that was served for 
dinner was prize to the bravest man in the company — you 
may fancy how many fights grew out of this custom. 

What a contrast between such a life and the polite, re- 
fined, and delightful manners of the French people in our 
day ! 




HEAD OF KING CLOVIS 



Chapter II 

BRUNEHAULT AND FREDEGONDE 
A.D. 511-V52 

The four sons of Clovis were named Thierry, Clotaire, 
Childebert, and Chlodomir. They were jealous of each 
other ; they felt that there was not room for all four in 
France ; but, before they had time to quarrel, their grand- 
father, the Duke of Bui-gundy, was murdered by one Sigis- 
mund, who usurped his throne, and their mother called 
upon them to avenge his death. Clotaire and Chlodomir 
accordingly invaded Burgundy, fought Sigisraund, took 
him prisoner, knocked him about a good deal, and at last 
flung him into a well, which they filled up with stones. 
On their way back, a son of the dead Sigismund lay in 
wait for them, caught Chlodomir unawares, and ran him 
through the body with a pike. So one of the four sons 
was out of the way. 

He had left three little boys, who were being brought 
up by their grandmother. Said Childebert to Clotaire : 
" These children must be got out of the way, so we may 
divide the kingdom between us." And they sent to the 
grandmother a messenger who bore a sword in one hand 
and a pair of scissors in the other, and bade her choose 
whether her grandsons should be tonsured (which means 
being forced to enter the priesthood) or be killed. She 
replied she would rather they were dead than jDriests. 
Thereupon, Clotaire stabbed the eldest boy, who was ten, 
under the arm, and reached out his hand for the younger, 
who was seven. 

The child clung to the knees of his uncle Childebert 
and begged his life piteously. Childebert turned to his 



12 [511-752 

brother and cried, " Grant me the child's life— I will pay 
thee what ransom thou wilt." But the bloody-minded 
Clotaire scoffed him ; he stabbed the boy as he had stab- 
bed his brother, and the two sons of Clovis mounted their 
horses and rode into the city, seeking the third child. 
He woald have perished like his brothers, had he not es- 
caped by turning monk ; he gave his name to the monas- 
tery of St. Cloud, which the French afterward turned into 
a palace, and the Germans burned a few years ago. 

Childebert died soon afterward — in his bed — and so 
another of the four brothers was got rid of. Presently 
Thierry was taken ill on a march he was making to rob 
northern Italy, and expired of a fever. So at last, of the 
four sons of Clovis, Clotaire was the only one left. He 
became King of France, as his father had been ; but three 
years afterward he also died, leaving his kingdom, as his 
father had done, to be divided between his four sons. I 
should have supposed that he had seen enough of such 
divisions. 

Of the four, one died soon after his father, and another, 
Gontran, got the Duchy of Burgundy, and lived there 
quietly. The other two are chiefly known as the husbands 
of two of the worst women in history. 

The eldest, Sigebert, married a Spanish girl of great 
beauty and some education, named Brunehault. Her sis- 
ter had married Sigebert's brother Chilperic ; but Chil- 
peric one day met a lovely girl named Fredegonde, who 
fascinated him and cast over him a spell which he could 
not resist. She first made him strangle his wife in her 
bed ; then she married him. 

Brunehault persuaded her husband to avenge her sister, 
and war broke out betw^een the two brothers. It did not 
last long. Two of Fredegonde's men-at-arms gained ad- 
mission to Sigebert to deliver a message and stabbed him 
with poisoned knives. Fredegonde, rejoicing over the 
murder, pushed on and caught Brunehault, whose chances 
of life would have been slim if her beauty had been less. 







CHLODOMIR S SOJSI SUBMITS TO TONSURE 



As it was, she made a conquest of a prince, who helped 
her to escape. 

For years the war raged between these two women. 
Both were beautiful and fascinating ; they were said to be 
sorceresses, probably because they could turn any man's 
head and mould him to their will. The advantage was 
generally with Fredegonde. But one day a bishop saw, or 
said that he saw, the sword of God's wrath hanging over 
her house, and frightened her almost to death by telling 
her the story. Shortly afterward, her two sons died of a 
fever, and she felt sure that this was her punishment. 
Husband and w^ife fell to railing at each other for having 
brought down the wrath of Heaven upon them, and Frede- 



16 - [511-752 

gonde, in her fury, had her husband assassinated. So now 
both women were widows, and the only one of Clotaire's 
sons who still lived was Gontran, Duke of Burgundy. 

To him, for the people were furious at her husband's 
murder, Fredegonde fled and sought protection for herself 
and her young son. Gontran, who was a silly sort of per- 
son, took her part, declared that she was a much-injured 
woman, and lent her an army. She won a battle, is it said, 
by moving her troops under cover of large branches of 
trees, which made it appear that a forest was in motion ; 
but the excitement was too much for her : she fell ill and 
soon after died. Gontran was then dead ; so were his 
brothers ; alone of the bad lot that had fought for Clo- 
taire's inheritance, Brunehault survived. 

She was an old woman now, and had neither husband, 
lover, nor son. But she insisted on continuing to rule in 
the name of her grandson ; and, in order that he should 
not interfere with her, she surrounded him with idle com- 
panions, male and female, and encouraged him to lead a 
life of dissipation. She was as imperious as ever ; what- 
ever she said was law ; every one had to obey whomsoever 
she honored. She humbled the nobles, made enemies of 
the priests, and provoked the soldiers. So when the son 
of her old enemy Fredegonde led an army to attack her, 
she was unable to defend herself. People would not fight 
for her. There was a battle, but Brunehault's troops 
threw down their arms, and the old queen was captured. 
It was no use expecting pity in those cruel times. A rope 
was twisted in the gray hair of the old woman, and was 
twined round one wrist and one ankle. The other end was 
fastened to the tail of a wild horse, and he was lashed into 
a furious gallop over brake, brier, thorn, and boulder. The 
body of the poor old queen was literally torn in pieces. 
Before her death, her old rival's son had inflicted on her 
every form of insult and torture, and it is quite likely that 
death, however cruel it w^as, was not wholly unwelcome. 
It was said of her that she had killed ten kings, most of 




DEATH OF BRUNEHAULT 

whom were her own kith and kin ; and in those days it was 
thought to be much more serious busmess to kill a kmg 

than a common man. . ri .i. 

For nearly a hundred and twenty years after the death 
of Brunehault there was but one king of France-Dago- 
l^ert— whom you would care to hear about. The others 
were "idle kings," as the people called them : they wore 
long hair and long beards and crowns, and lived m pal- 

2 



18 [511-752 

aces, and on coronation day were taken to church in 
wagons drawn by bullocks, while the people cheered, and 
the boys and girls shouted for glee ; but they had no 
power, did not try to interfere with public affairs, but 
spent their time in games with friends as idle as they. 
Dagobert did try to do his duty ; he improved the laws 
and punished those who were guilty of crime ; but he led 
a loose life, and enjoyed the society of the gay ladies of 
his court better than that of his counsellors. As for the 
others, they were simply nobodies. No one paid any at- 
tention to them — neither the officers of the army, nor the 
priests of the Church, nor the nobility, nor even the work- 
ing people, nor the peasants. 

You will wonder how France was governed at this 
time. There was an officer who was elected by the bishops 
and the nobles, and who was called the Mayor of the 
Palace. All power was confided to him — subject in some 
respects to the approval of the bishops. He collected the 
revenues and paid them out ; he chose magistrates, judges, 
and generals ; he directed the movements of the army ; he 
treated with foreign nations ; he altered the laws and had 
them carried out. The Church had by this time become 
so powerful in France that no one who was its enemy 
could stand long. Generally the mayors of the palace 
managed to keep on the right side of the bishops, and as 
long as they did so the Church did not interfere with 
them. Much of the best land in France was passing into 
the ownership of the Church, and the only great monu- 
ments that were being built were cathedrals, churches, 
monasteries, and convents. The common people reverenced 
the priests and obeyed them in all things. Only the army 
stood jealously aloof and hated them. 

In the year 714, Pepin, the Mayor of the Palace, lay on 
his death-bed, with his son Grimoald, whom he had chosen 
as his successor, by his bedside. A murderer entered the 
room and strangled Grimoald, on the very bed on which 
his father lay. Pepin died of the shock, and the nobles 



511-'752] 19 

elected another son of his — Charles — to be mayor in his 
stead. Now, the mother of Charles was not his father's 
wife. 

The priests and bishops had spoken ranch ill of her in 
consequence; one bishop had said such bitter things that 
her brother had broken into the bishop's palace and 
stabbed him to death while he was at his prayers. You 
may imagine that there was no love lost between the 
priests and Charles. He no sooner became Mayor of the 
Palace than he took from the Church one rich piece of 
property after another and bestowed it on officers of the 
army. But the bishops had no time to show their resent- 
ment, for an enemy even more formidable than the new 
Mayor of the Palace was threatening them at that very 
moment. 

Sweeping northward from Spain, which they had over- 
run from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees, an army of 
Saracens or Moors, which is said to have numbered several 
hundred thousand, chiefly cavalry, had sallied forth from 
Narbonne, crossed the Garonne, and was striking for the 
valley of the Loire. They were Moslems, that is, followers 
of Mohammed, and wherever they went they put Christians 
to death, because of their faith, and stamped out Christian- 
ity. They had spread their empire all over Western Asia, 
all Northern Africa, and all Spain. A few more conquests 
would make them masters of all Europe as well. They 
were good fighters, frugal livers, brave soldiers; they feared 
nothing, and scoured the world like the wind on their swift 
chargers, ready to die without a murmur for their religion; 
up to that time no race or people had been able to hold 
their own against them. For help against these terrible 
invaders, a piteous cry came up to Charles from southern 
France. 

He was the man for the hour. Gathering troops from 
far and wide, pressing every able - bodied man into the 
ranks and arming him as he could, calling uj^on Gaul and 
Frank and Goth and Roman to strike a blow for God and 



20 



[511-752 



country, he inspired his people with his own tireless ener- 
gy. He moved as swiftly as the Moors themselves, and 
in a plain near Tours fell upon them like a thunderbolt. 
The battle lasted only a few hours ; the Moslem troops 
could not stand the mighty shock of the heavy Northern 
infantry; the light African horse reeled under the onset 
of the great Flemish chargers ; when the next day dawned 
the white tents of the Arabs were found empty, great 
mounds of corpses strewed the plain, and clouds of dust 




THKOjNE of DAblOliEllT 



on the southern sky told a tale of retreat. The Moors fell 
back, and back, until they left the soil of France for a 
time. 

For the heavy blows which Charles had dealt to the ene- 
my in this battle the people gave him the name of Charles 
Martel, or Charles the Hammer; and by that name you will 
remember him. But for him all Europe might have been 
Mohammedan, and perhaps — who can say? — you might to 
this day, at sunset, hc^ye been praving to AJl^h on a carpets 



21 

511-752] 

Charles the Hammer died in V52, and named his son 
Pepin as his successor in the office of mayor. But the 
Pope of Rome, who happened to be a man of a good deal 
of common-sense, declared that the kingly title should rest 
where the kingly power was, and sent a priest to crown 
Pepin King of France. It was a good arrangement, no 
doubt ; but it had the inconvenience of establishing the 
rule that kings must be crowned by the pope, and this, you 
will find hereafter, led to a good deal of trouble. 



Chapter III 

PEPIN THE LITTLE 
A.D. '752-771 

There were two objections to Pepin's becoming King of 
France. First, there was a king already, whose name was 
Childeric, and who was living in a cloister, wearing the 
long beard and the crown of a king. He did not meddle 
with government, but he was rightful king for all that. 
Of him Pepin disposed by shutting him up in a convent 
at St. Omer, where he soon died. When kings are made 
captives they seldom live long. 

Next, Pepin was a very short man, so short that he was 
called Pepin the Little. Now, among the Franks and the 
Northern races generally, kings and chiefs were always 
men of lofty stature. They were generally the tallest men 
of their tribes. Some of the Frank soldiers sneered at Pe- 
pin because they could look over his head. But if he was 
short, he was broad; and he had the strength of a giant 
and the spirit of a hero. 

At a circus, where the people had assembled to see the 
games, there was a fight between a lion and a bull. The 
animals dashed at each other, and were soon in a death- 
grapple. The bull had gored the lion, but the latter had 
thrown its big enemy, and was tearing its neck and shoul- 
ders with its sharp claws. All at once Pepin cried, 

" Is there any one here who dares to separate these two 
brutes ?" 

He glanced over at the benches where the great nobles 
and the tall warriors sat, but they all looked the other way 
and pretended not to have heard. Then Pepin, drawing 
his swordj leaped into the I'ing, and with a few sharp blows 



752-771] 



23 



drove off the lion and cowed the bull. Then, turning to 
his nobles, he asked, 

" Say, now, am I worthy to be your king ?" 
I need not tell you of the shout which arose in the cir- 
cus, or of the shamefaced air of the warriors who had ob- 
jected to Pepin because he was too little. 




CHAPEL OF ST. JOHN AT POITIEKS 

Pepin reigned over France for sixteen years, and in that 
time conducted two great wars. The first was against a 
savage people who were called Lombards, from their long 
beards, and who had invaded Italy and settled in the north- 
ern part. As they were fonder of fighting than of work, 
they were often short of money, and when this happened 
they had a way of marching down to Rome and other 
rich Italian cities and demanding tribute. Where the de- 
mand was denied they would sack the city and go home 
laden with plunder. The Pope of Rome now sent to Paris, 
and asked Pepin would he drive out the Lombards for the 
sake of his love for the Church ? If he would, the pope 
and the bishops would be his stanch friends forever. 



24 * [752-771 

Kothing suited the little king better. He led his fight- 
ing Franks and Gauls across the Alps, scattered the Lom- 
bards in short order, and took their lands and their cities. 
These he refused to keep, but gave them, one and all, to St. 
Peter and the pope. You will not be surprised to hear that 
after this Pepin was much thought of at Rome, and was 
blessed on high days and holy days by the pope. The 
priests in France received strict orders to teach their people 
that it was exceedingly impious to oppose him in any way. 

Pepin's other war was with Aquitaine, the southwestern 
portion of France. This country was largely peopled by 
a sturdy and turbulent race, called Basques, who were at 
first shepherds in the Pyrenees. They were a short, black- 
haired, black-eyed race, bright, quick, brave, and passion- 
ate. When they swarmed down the wooded slopes of the 
mountains, in their red capes, with knives in their belts 
and woollen shoes on their feet, driving before them flocks 
of sheep and followed by their wives and children, it was 
not particularly safe to bar their way. The leader of these 
people, Duke Eudes of Aquitaine, formed an alliance with 
a Moorish emir named Munuza, and proposed to establish 
a great kingdom in southern France and northern Spain. 
Eudes was a Christian, and Munuza was a Moslem ; but 
neither of them troubled himself much about religion. 
Eudes gave his daughter to wife to the Moslem, and they 
took the field with a great army. 

But they were between two fires, and both were hot. 
The Moslem Caliph of Seville, in Spain, sent an army against 
Munuza, and besieged him in a fortress. He beleaguered 
the place so closely that not a man nor a pound of food 
could get in to the garrison, and Munuza, after holding out 
till his men were nearly starved and looked as if they 
would eat one another, threw himself head-downward from 
the topmost stone of the fort. His Christian wife was 
taken with the rest of the spoil, and was sent as a present 
to the Caliph of Damascus. The poor, pale girl cried her 
jife out as a captive in an Arab's harem. 



'752-7'71] 25 

Then Pepin, who had settled his account with the Lom- 
bards, turned on Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine. This time he 
met a foe who could light. The war lasted year in and 
year out. Battles were fought, and battles won and lost; 
but the fighting went on forever. In some strife, we hard- 
ly know where, Eudes was killed; but his sons, Hun aid 
and Hatto, went on with the war. It was the old, sicken- 
ing story of treachery, superstition, rapine, bloodshed, and 
murder. Hatto betrayed Hunald. Hunald caught him 
and tore his eyes out. Then, repenting, he sentenced him- 
self to life -imprisonment in a monastery. But his son 
Guaifer took up the cause and went on butchering and 
ravaging. 

With the help of Moorish allies, Guaifer captured a 
party of Goths and massacred them; the people of Nar- 
bonne rose one morning and slew every Moor in the place. 
Pepin and his Franks marched through Berry, Limousin, 
and Aquitaine, burning every house and every tree, and 
cutting down every vine. Guaifer was at last driven into 
the wild fastnesses of the mountains. One by one his 
friends left him; and at last a couple of villains — there 
were plenty of such in those days — crept up to him while 
he slept and put him to death, in order to curry favor with 
Pepin. So there was an end of the war at last. 

In his last years Pepin became very pious indeed. The 
bishops persuaded him that it was better for the country 
to let them make the laws, and he agreed on condition 
that they should give him relics of the saints. Of these 
the supply was large — I believe it is not exhausted yet. 
He used to parade on solemn occasions with his shoulders 
and head covered with saints' bones and shreds of saints' 
clothing. I hope they did him good ; but they did not 
keep him alive, nor make him friends when his time came. 
As it was, he left his kingdom to a monarch far greater 
th^^a himself. 



Chapter IV 

CHARLEMAGNE 
A.D. 771-814 

Charles, the son of Pepin, was twenty-six years old 
when he succeeded his father as King of France. His life 
began with the usual family quarrels. He quarrelled with 
his brother and drove him into exile, where he soon died. 
And he quarrelled with his wife, the daughter of the King 
of Lombardy, and sent her back to her father. But he 
soon had graver concerns than home strife. 

The King of Lombardy, enraged at having his daughter 
thrown back on his hands, declared war upon Charles, who 
accepted the challenge, overcame his enemy in short order, 
and made himself King of the Lombards as well as King of 
the Franks. He put the iron crown of Lombardy on his 
head and went to Rome, where the pope made much of 
him, gave him his blessing, and called him Charlemagne. 
Charles accepted the blessing gratefully, but, in order to 
prevent mistakes, observed to the pope that, while he was 
the best friend the Church had, he proposed henceforth to 
be master. If disputes arose the pope was to take his 
orders from him, not he from the pope. This made mat- 
ters clearer than they had been in the later years of Pepin. 
The pope submitted, the less reluctantly because Charle- 
magne told him that he had resolved to undertake the con- 
version of the Saxons. 

The Saxons — from whom in part the American people 
are descended — were then a tribe, or a band of tribes, set- 
tled in the country that is now northern Germany, be- 
tween the Rhine and the Elbe, and stretching south as far 
as Bohemia. They lived either in woods so dense that it 



111-8U] 27 

was said a squirrel could travel twenty miles, leaping from 
branch to branch, without touching the ground ; or in vast 
prairies which were often water-soaked in summer and 
frozen over in winter. They had never been conquered, 
and had never become Christians ; they were as brave and 
as fierce and as savage as they had been when they de- 
fied Caesar to invade their country. From France mis- 



A KING OF FRANCE TRAVELLING 

sionaries had gone to convert them, and had barely es- 
caped with their lives. These were the people whom 
Charlemagne had undertaken to convert and to subdue. 
To be near at hand for his work, he moved his court from 
Paris to Aix-la-Chapelle, which is near the Rhine in Ger- 
many. 



28 [771-814 

As the Saxons were an unlettered people, while the 
priests among the Franks were educated, all the accounts 
which we have of the war are from Frankish sources, and 
some of them are very surprising indeed. 

In Saxony there stood a statue, which represented a 
huge man with a balance in one hand and a flag in the 
other ; on his arm hung a buckler, with a lion on it, lord- 
ing it over other animals. The priests said that this was 
an idol which the Saxons worshipped, so Charlemagne's 
soldiers marched on it and broke it to pieces. Forthwith, 
by a miracle, a spring of fresh water gushed |orth from 
the base of the statue to refresh the thirsty troops after 
their exertions. Whether the spring did or did not gush 
forth, there is no doubt that the destruction of the statue 
exasperated the Saxons and iired them to continue their 
resistance. 

According to the priestly accounts, miracles were not un- 
common in that war. There was a Christian church which 
a saint had built in Saxony. The Saxon chief ordered that 
it be burned, and a soldier was sent to set it on fire. But it 
had been foretold by the saint who built the church that it 
could never be consumed by fire, and as the soldier knelt 
down to apply his torch, two angels descended from heaven, 
all clad in white, extinguished the flame, and petrified the 
Saxon, so that he was found long afterward, turned to 
stone, in the attitude of kneeling, with his cheeks still 
puffed out in the act of blowing the embers. 

The Franks were better trained to fighting than the 
Saxons, and they were more numerous. But after a bat- 
tle the defeated Saxons would fly to their wooded hiding- 
places to gain breath, and would renew the war just when 
they were least expected. They had an exceedingly in- 
genious and brave chief named Witikind, who fought 
year after year, and was almost always beaten, yet was 
never conquered : Charlemagne no sooner felt that his 
work was done, and that the Saxons would give him no 
more trouble, than Witikind would loom up again, and 



771-814] 



29 



swoojD down upon the Franks, and sack their camps, and 
caj)tiire their supplies. Charlemagne tried every device of 
war with small success. Once, when the Saxon army re- 
treated after a battle, leaving behind them some four thou- 
sand five hundred wounded or sick men who could not keep 
up Avith the flying army, the cruel Frank had them all be- 
headed to strike terror to their friends. Again, he would 
surround Saxon settlements and transplant every one — 
men, Avomen, and children — to some distant part of France. 
But those who remained still continued to resist. 

They did not object so much to baptism, the meaning of 
which they probably did not understand. Indeed, when 
the priests gave out that every one who was christened 




BAPTIZING THE gAXONS 



30 [7'71-814 

must wear a white robe, and that if he didn't own one the 
Church would supply it, vast numbers of Saxons presented 
themselves for baptism to get the white robe. They came 
to be baptized not once, but many times. Some of them were 
particular about the robe : one of them told Charlemagne 
that if the priest couldn't furnish him Avith a clean new 
linen robe, white as snow, he wouldn't be baptized any 
more. But the baptized Saxons fought as fiercely against 
the Franks as those who had not undergone the operation. 

The war lasted thirty-three years. It was not till 805 
that Charlemagne could say that it was positively ended, 
that the Saxons were finally subdued, and that his em^^ire 
extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Elbe and almost 
to the Oder. 

While it was raging, Charlemagne undertook another 
war against the Basques and their friends in northern 
Spain. He was successful at first, but, meeting with re- 
verses, he ordered a retreat, and his enemy caught his 
army in a pass of the Pyrenees, at Roncesvalles, rolled 
great stones and logs on them from the overhanging crags, 
and cut them off to a man. Not a Frank escaped, and the 
overwhelming disaster so preyed upon Charlemagne's 
mind that he never returned to Spain. 

It was at Roncesvalles that he lost one of his best cap- 
tains, the famous Roland the paladin, whose storj^^ used to 
be a favorite with the troubadour minstrels. Roland car- 
ried a sword of such extraordinary strength and keenness 
that with one blow of it he clove a pass through the moun- 
tain range of the Pyrenees ; when he broke it at Ronces- 
valles, he seized his horn and blew a rescue call that was 
heard miles and miles away. So loud and so piercingly 
did he blow his horn that he burst the veins in his neck 
in the effort and died in consequence. It was a pity, for 
he was a good friend of the Church and a right valiant 
knight. 

When Charlemagne had crushed the Saxons, he ruled 
over a kingdom which comprised all of modern France, 




KOLAND THE PALADIN AT EONCESVALLES 



half of modern Germany, four-fifths of modern Italy, and 
all of modern Switzerland. On the strength of this vast 
empire he claimed to be the Emperor of the West and the 
successor of the Caesars of Rome, and the pope crowned 
him by that title. Though his proper title had been King 
of the Franks, he was a German like his father, and spoke 
German all his life. He lived in a German city, and his 
most trusted friends were Germans. 

But he gathered round him in his palace at Aix - la- 
Chapelle men of education from all nations, and, first of 
all modern monarchs, he encouraged learning. In his day 
there was no learning outside the monasteries and con- 
verts ajid cathedrals. Nobles and soldiers thought it b$- 



32 [771-814 

neath them to read and write. Charlemagne himself 
learned to read late in life, but he never could be taught 
to write ; it was with effort that he trained his hand to 
sign his name. In his palace he established a school, with 
great scholars at its head, and there, with as many noble- 
men's sons and other young men as chose to attend, he 
studied astronomy, theology, law, grammar, rhetoric, and 
music. He stinted his sleep to gain time to study. He 
taught himself to speak Latin and Greek ; the Gaulish and 
Frankish languages he had acquired in his youth. When 
he found a young man of promise, he rewarded him by 
giving him a high office in the Church. In this way boys 
were sometimes made bishops before their beards had be- 
gun to grow. 

His domestic life was not happy. He had had nine 
wives — sometimes, I am afraid, two at a time ; and when he 
was quite an old man, he offered marriage to the Empress 
Irene of Constantinople, who was not a young woman. 
The empress had heard of his conversation with the pope, 
which I have related, and she replied that she preferred 
remaining a widow. One of his wives, Hildegarde, had a 
roaring voice, and bellowed at him when she spoke ; when 
she died, he married Fastrade, who had a gentle voice, 
but a most ungentle temper. She bullied her old husband 
to such a degree that the nobles of his court took pity on 
him and plotted to get rid of her. 

By these wives he had six sons and eight daughters. 
Among the former there was not one who could deny that 
he was a fool. The girls were beautiful, but their father 
refused to allow them to marry, and they were rather dis- 
contented with their lot in consequence. In the old story- 
books of the times there are several tales of the merry adven- 
tures with which the young ladies amused themselves, and 
tried to beguile the dulness of spinsterhood ; but their old 
father had lattices fitted into every room in the palace, so 
that he could see all that was going on, and he kept pretty 
close watch of his family, Jle had a sly way of dealing 



771-814] 33 

with a young man who gave him oflfence. He ordered him 
to go to a distant monastery in Italy to do penance ; and it 
was curiously remarked that the people who went off on 
these journeys were never heard of again. 

Once in a way, a young man got the best of the king. 
One of his daughters had a sweetheart named Eginhard, 
who w^anted to marry her. Charlemagne forbade him to 
appear at the palace, but, like a gallant knight, he set the 
king's commands at defiance in order to see his true love. 
It was her custom, when bedtime came, to let him out by 
a side door, so that Charlemagne should not know he had 
called ; but one evening, while he was in the palace, snow 
began to fall, and when the lovers went to the side door 
they saw that Eginhard's footsteps in the freshly fallen 
snow would reveal his visit. The young knight was dis- 
mayed ; but the girl, who was stout and strong, bade him 
cheer up ; and taking him on her shoulders, she carried him 
out of the palace grounds. Charlemagne saw her out of 
one of his lattices, and was so much touched by her devo- 
tion that he gave Eginhard a fine estate. 

In his later years he bestowed more time on his study 
of the liturgy and of church-music than on the affairs of 
the Empire. Thus large parts of Erance which ought to 
have been bearing crops were left to pasture, and the price 
of bread rose very high. Six bushels of wheat were worth 
as much as an ox. This, of course, made free labor wortn 
less than it should have been, and slaves increased in num- 
bers. To the head of his school at Aix-la-Chapelle, Charle- 
magne gave a farm with twenty thousand slaves on it. 

In his seventy-second year he was attacked by a fever 
which proved fatal. As long as he retained his senses, he 
continued to read a Latin copy of the Gospels, which he 
had been studying ; when the end came he stretched forth 
his hands, cried "Into thy hands do I commend my spirit!" 
and expired. 

By his special direction he was buried in the cathedral at 
Aix-la-Chapelle which he had built. He was buried seated 
3 



34 A child's history of FRANCE [771-814 

on his throne, in his royal robes, with his crown on his 
head and his sword by his side ; and so well was the work 
of the embalmer done that when his tomb was opened two 
centuries afterward, he still sat erect, and it is said that his 
features were easily recognized. The crown, which was of 
value, was taken to Vienna, where the other imperial treas- 
ures are ; the throne you can still see at Aix-la-Chapelle ; 
and once every seven years you can see in the famous cathe- 
dral of that place the collection of relics which were sent 
him by the pope. 

But the work which he did crumbled into dust even be- 
fore his bones. His endeavor to revive learning proved a 
failure through the stupidity of the nobility and the jeal- 
ousy of the priests ; his empire fell to pieces like a house 
of cards ; and the two nations whom he united under his 
sway, and over which he dreamed that his successors 
would reign, have been quarrelling almost ever since, and 
are now bitter enemies, waiting an opportunity to fly at 
each other's throats. 



Chapter V 

LOUIS THE GENTLE 

A.D. 814-843 

The son and successor of Charlemagne was named Louis, 
and as it was the custom of the day to give every one a 
nickname, he was called the Gentle. He had been brought 
up by priests, and had become very pious indeed — so pious 
that one of his first acts as emperor was to insist on priests 
leading quiet lives, and ceasing to carry arms, or to wear 
spurs, or to ride on horseback with the soldiers. Two 
priests, who had contrived to gain a good deal of power 
under his father, Charlemagne, he sent to their monas- 
teries, and ordered them to remain there. No poor man 
appealed to him for justice in vain : he heard every one 
patiently and righted all who had been wronged. So 
people began to think they had got a very good kind of 
emperor indeed. 

But his troubles were to come — and from his own fam- 
ily. Charlemagne had had an older son than Louis — Pepin 
— who died before his father ; his son Bernard had been 
set over the Kingdom of Italy. He now claimed the whole 
Empire and gathered an army to overthrow his uncle. 
But after it had marched some distance, most of the offi- 
cers lost heart, and deserted, so that Louis easily captured 
his nephew and his remaining adherents. He was so good- 
natured that he was for forgiving them ; but his generals 
would not consent to that, saying that death was the proper 
doom of traitors. So said Louis's wife, a violent woman 
named Hermengarde. Louis still refused to allow his 
nephew to be executed; but when Hermengarde said, "At 
least, the traitor's eyes must be put out," he, very reluc- 



36 



[8U-S43 



tantly, consented. Bernard was handed over to his cruel 
aunt, who put his eyes out so roughly that he died three 
days afterward. She soon followed him to the grave. 

After her death Louis married a beautiful and wicked 
woman, Judith of Bavaria. She despised her gentle hus- 
band and chose as her best friend another Bernard, whose 




THE NORMANS ASCENDING A FRENCH RIVER 

father was William the Short-nose. The pair led Louis a 
miserable life. He had other cares beside. A race of 
corsairs, who were called Northmen or Xormans, began to 
prey on the coasts of Europe, from England as far round 
as Sicily. These sea-rovers came from Xorway, Sweden, 
and Denmark, and in search of plunder sailed the stormiest 
seas fearlessly in open boats without decks. They were as 
valiant fighters as they were expert mariners. They would 
land near a sea- coast town, rob it of everything that was 
worth taking, and scamper off to sea with their booty. 



814-843] 37 

One branch of them, who came from Denmark, actually 
conquered England and held it for many years. Another 
branch is supposed to have landed in New England five 
hundred years before Columbus discovered America ; but, 
as they did not find anything there that was worth steal- 
ing, they did not stay. Yet a third band swooped down 
on the coast of France and ravaged it far and wide ; they 
captured many prisoners, but afterward they got so much 
booty that it filled their ships, and they had to release their 
prisoners to make room for it. 

The story of their ravages filled Louis's tender heart with 
anguish. He was distressed beyond measure, too, over the 
memory of the death of his poor nephew. He could not 
forgive himself for having allowed his cruel wife to put 
the poor boj^^'s eyes out, and that so brutally that he died 
of the operation. He brooded over these things till he 
brought himself to believe that he should do public pen- 
ance. 

He entered a church, walked up the main aisle, went 
down on his knees, and confessed himself a sinner in the 
presence of the whole congregation, while the bishops and 
priests, in their robes, stood in front, frowning sternly at 
him. 

The priests must have been secretly pleased at his sub- 
mission to the Church, but the nobles and soldiers did not 
like it at all. They said that a king who had done penance 
was degraded, and was not fit to lead armies. And they 
fell to plotting his overthrow. Of all men in France, they 
chose as their leaders in the conspiracy the king's own 
sons — Lothair, who was backed by the pope, and Pepin, who 
was induced to join by Bernard, the son of Short -nose. 
The rebels met the king, their father, on the plains of Al- 
sace. During the night, the pope went over into the king's 
camp, for the purpose, as he said, of trying to settle the 
dispute, but the effect of his meddling was the desertion 
of a large part of the king's army next morning. As gen- 
tle as ever, Louis declared that he would have no man lose 



38 [814-843 

liis life on his account, and walked over and surrendered to 
his son Loth air. 

Lothair was quite capable of killing his father. He had 
thrust a lady with whom he quarrelled into a wine-cask 
and drowned her in a river. But he was afraid of the 
people, and he called a council of bishops to try the king. 
Before them the royal prisoner was accused of a long list 
of crimes, foremost among which was the murder of the 
nephew whom he had tried to save. This charge was fol- 
lowed by others equally false and equally absurd. But 
the poor, weak king made no defence. He M'ould deny 
nothing — would do nothing but cry, and moan that he was 
a miserable sinner. 

In the church of St. Medard at Soissons — you may see 
parts of it to-day — he was found guilty of the preposterous 
crimes with which he was charged. Archbishop Nebo, his 
foster-brother, tore his baldric from his shoulders and flung 
a shirt of sackcloth over his head. His son Lothair strip- 
ped him of belt and sw^ord, and held him down at the altar 
with his gray hairs sweeping the floor, while the fierce 
priests pronounced sentence. Lothair then led him to the 
cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, which his father Charlemagne 
had built ; there he stood at the door, in the wind and 
rain, with bare feet and ashes strewn over his head, making 
confession to all the people of crimes which he had not 
committed, and begging the pious to pray for him, a mis- 
erable sinner. 

But the wicked princes and priests overshot their mark. 
From the vast crowd which had assembled to see the king 
humbled, a piteous groan of shame and sorrow rose to 
heaven. Every Frank felt that he had been insulted in 
the person of the king. Next morning the people, with 
the nobles at their head, took up arms, and the tables were 
suddenly turned. The bad son Lothair fled on a swift 
horse and took no rest till he reached Italy. The vile 
Archbishop Nebo, stripped of his rank and wealth, hid 
himself in a distant convent and was never heard of more, 




A NOBLE S CASTLE, WITH TOWN AT ITS BASE 



Every bishop who had served on that council was sent into 
exile and deprived of his property. An extraordinary 
mortality broke out among the leaders of Lothair's army — 
scores of them died within the year. And once more Louis 
the Gentle was set on his throne. But his peace was not 
to last. 

Another son of his, Louis of Bavaria, clamored for more 
land to govern, and, the king refusing, took up arms. The 
father was then sixty-three years of age and much broken 
by the sorrows of his life, but he sallied forth at the head 
of his armies to meet his rebellious son and got as far as 
the bank of the Rhine. His fatigue and vexation there 
overcame him, and he was carried to an island in the 
river, near Mentz, where he died. From his death-bed he 
sent his son this message : " I forgive Louis ; but let him 
look to himself, who, despising God's command, has brought 
his father's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." 



40 [814-843 

Louis was a well-meaning man, but, as you will see as 
you read this history, something more than good intention 
is required of a king to make his country happy. Under 
his reign the best part of France fell into the hands of the 
Church and the nobles. There were no towns of any size 
except those which grew up around abbeys, bishop's pal- 
aces, or baronial castles. Nobles and churchmen cultivat- 
ed their lands with slaves. The greatest men in the king- 
dom were the Archbishop of Rheims, the Bishop of St. 
Martin at Tours, the Bishop of St. Hilary at Poitiers, the 
Abbot of St. Medard at Soissons, the Abbot of St. Denis 
near Paris. They were lordly personages, with mitres on 
their heads, and crooks like shepherdesses in their hands ; 
richer and more powerful than the dukes and counts, for 
they not only had armies at their command, but they could 
terrify ignorant people by threatening them with all sorts 
of horrible tortures in the world to come. When Loth air 
marched against his father, he took with him a pope who 
threatened those who refused to join the rebels that neither 
they nor any of their kith or kin should ever be married by 
a priest, or their children baptized, or their dead buried 
with the rites of the Church. And in those daj^s this was 
considered an awful doom. 

We shall have occasion before we come to the end of 
this history to speak of some bishops and priests whose 
memory you can reve"' ^ce. But in these old, old days the 
clergy were not a su s as managers of public affairs. 



Chapter VI 

HINCKMAR THE ARCHBISHOP 

A.D. 843-987 

Louis the Gentle left three sons : two by the cruel 
Hermengarde — Lothair, the son who had humbled him, and 
Louis of Bavaria — and one, Charles, by Judith. They at 
first divided the Empire ; then fought for it ; and at last it 
fell into the possession of Charles, who was the youngest 
and was bald. 

The real ruler during the reign of Charles was Hinck- 
mar, Archbishop of Rheinis. Charles was a poor-spirited 
creature, who crouched and cowered when this angry priest 
lifted his finger and thundered at him ; and really, of the 
two, the priest was more of a man than the king. Any- 
thing in the shape of a priest or a bishop made Charles's 
knees knock together, 

A priest named Venillo, whom Charles had made an 
archbishop, deserted him to join his enemy Louis ; where- 
upon Charles wrote a whining letter to the council of 
bishops, complaining that it was mean of Yenillo to have 
left him after having made him king, anointed him with 
the sacred oil, handed him the royal sceptre, and crowned 
him with the royal diadem. He asked the council had he 
not always been obedient to the Church ? Had he ever re- 
fused to bow down at the feet of the bishops and submit 
to their fatherly correction ? 

Hinckmar took away from the king the right of trying 
criminals in his courts ; the proper persons to hold courts, 
he said, were the priests. And when the king wanted sol- 
diers for his wars, Hinckmar required him to get them 
through the bishops — which^ I tjii^k^ was a ^ueer l>visines8 



42 [843-987 

for a servant of Christ to engage in. . In return, Hinckmar 
promised Charles the support of the Church whenever he 
needed it. After a battle, the monks of St. Medard came 
forth to him and loaded him with relics, which he bore on 
his shoulders to the cathedral at Rheims, greatly to the 
edification of the people. And when Louis of Germany 
quarrelled with Charles, Hinckmar went to see Louis and 
took a very high tone indeed. "As regards myself," said 
the haughty churchman, " I do pardon you. But as to 
your offences against the Church which is intrusted to my 
keeping, I can only offer you my advice, which is to obtain 
absolution." 

Hinckmar ruled his Church with an iron hand. There 
was a priest named Gotteschalk, who had opinions on re- 
ligion which Hinckmar did not like. The archbishop sent 
a band of soldiers to seize Gotteschalk, questioned him, and, 
finding his answers not satisfactory, had him soundly beat- 
en with whips and locked up in an underground dungeon 
with the bats and rats. Gotteschalk offered to prove the 
truth of his faith, by stepping successively into three bar- 
rels filled with boiling water, boiling tar, and boiling pitch. 
But it did not serve. Hinckmar sent him back into the 
dungeon. It was not particularly safe, at that time, in 
France, for a man to have opinions on any subject, no mat- 
ter how he offered to prove their truth. 

But it was a much easier thing to shut up a priest in a 
dungeon than to shut up the Northern pirates in their 
country. Hinckmar found this job beyond his power. 
Every year, as soon as the spring-birds began to sing, these 
sea-rovers came swooping down upon the coasts of France, 
landing in some sheltered cove, seizing money, jewels, food, 
cattle, and young girls, and dashing off to sea again with 
their booty. By and by, they were not content with the 
sea-coast. They sailed up the rivers, in their broad boats, 
with ribs of iron, and with great beaks of bronze and ivory, 
fashioned in the shape of a serpent or a bird of prey. 
Back of this beak stood a warrior, shouting, singing, and 



843-987] 45 

gesticulating, to strike terror into the hearts of those who 
saw him : he was called a Berserkir, which in the Norman 
tongue meant a madman. Along the bank of the river ran 
other warriors, blowing horns and bellowing war-cries. 
When the poor French peasants saw a fleet of these boats 
come sweeping round the hill, dashing the foam from their 
bows, and heard the horn yonder on the beach, they fled, as 
swiftly as they could, with wives and children, and, if they 
had time, with such scraps of their belongings as they 
could pick up, to the nearest castle or monastery. Some- 
times the count or the abbot was strong enough to give 
battle to the pirates ; but this did not often happen ; con- 
vents, churches, and castles were often pretty thoroughly 
robbed, and their owners killed under their own roofs. The 
only sure way to get rid of the Northmen was to buy them 
oft'. One year, Charles paid them four thousand pounds of 
silver ; the next year he paid them five thousand ; the 
year after that they insisted on getting six thousand — and 
they got them. The abbot of the rich abbey of St. Denys 
paid them a sum of money equal to three hundred thousand 
of our dollars. 

These sea-rovers were not all Northmen. Many of them 
were vagabonds of other races, who joined the Northmen 
for plunder. One of the most famous, named Hastings, 
was a French peasant. 

Hearing stories of the rich plunder which these North- 
men got in the North, the Moors of Spain thought they 
would do a little robbing on their own account in the 
South, and marched one day upon the Archbishop of Aries, 
who was very rich. He gave them battle at the head of 
his soldiers, but three hundred of the latter were killed, 
and the archbishop himself was taken. His people sent a 
messenger to bargain for his release, and actually paid the 
Moors a hundred and fifty pounds of silver, a hundred and 
fifty cloaksj a hundred and fifty swords, and a hundred and 
fifty slaves. This was on account. The rest of the ransom 
was to be paid as soon as the people of Aries could raise it. 



46 [843-987 

Meanwhile, the archbishop, who was a prisoner in chains on 
a Moorish vessel, suddenly died. The cunning Moors con- 
cealed the fact of his death, and kept telling the Arles- 
ians that they would not wait much longer for the rest of 
their ransom, but would cut off the archbishop's head if it 
were not forthcoming soon ; whereupon the money was 
made up and sent to the Moorish chief. When it was re- 
ceived, the Moors set the archbishop in his chair, clad in 
his priestly robes, carried him on shore, dead as he was, 
and sailed away. 

Things had got to such a dreadful pass that Hinckmar 
himself was forced to confess that he had undertaken to 
do more than he could. He wrote a rather manly letter to 
the pope, telling him that neither he nor the king was able 
to take care of France, and would His Holiness appoint some 
one who could ? Several members of the family of Charles 
the Bald undertook the task ; one of them, a nephew of 
Charles, raised an army in Italy for the purpose. Charles 
marched to meet him, and got as far as the Alps. There, 
being suddenly taken ill, near Mont Cenis, he was carried 
to the hut of a goatherd. He had with him a Jew physi- 
cian, named Zedekias ; this man is said to have poisoned 
him. However this may be, he died, and with him the 
Empire which Charlemagne had built up dissolved into air. 

After him one of his sons, who was called Louis the 
Stammerer, pretended to be emperor and king for a few 
months, but nobody minded him, either while he lived or 
when he died. Two sons of his also played at being kings 
for a little while, but soon gave up the game ; and then a 
son of one of them — who was called Charles the Fat — pre- 
tended to succeed. He was too fat to move around. The 
Normans besieged him in his own city of Paris, and captured 
every fertile valley from the mouth of the Seine to the 
mouth of the Garonne. He finally died of corpulence, in 
the year S17, just one hundred and nine years after Char- 
lemagne had founded the Empire of the West. 

Then followed another century of such horrible confusion 




CHARLES THE BALD AND HIS PRIESTS 



that I do not know how I can describe it to you. There 
were a number of real or pretended descendants of Char- 
lemagne, each of whom, in his turn, claimed to be king or 
emperor, but could not keep the peace in his own back- 
yard, much less protect his subjects. In the north, bands 
of Northmen, in the south, bands of Moors, in the south- 
east, bands of Hungarians, whose faces had been slashed 
by their fathers to make them more hideous, marched into 
the country at harvest-time, and carried off the ripe crops, 
adding to them any trifle of silver, any good weapon, any 



48 [843-987 

silk or linen garment, or any pretty girl they found. To 
resist the robbers, the peasants armed themselves, picked 
out their bravest men to lead them, and did their little best 
— they could not do much ; these leaders became known 
as counts and barons and dukes, and the peasants were 
quite willing that they should take pay in land for the 
work they did. But there was no settled order or author- 
ity anywhere. 

There was a Count of Paris named Eudes, who was a 
gallant soldier, and was very powerful for ten years ; there 
was a king called Charles the Simple, who is said to have 
had quite a long reign. There was a brave and good leader 
of the people whose name was Duke Robert of Paris ; he 
had a good and brave son called Hugh the White ; father 
and son were for many years more powerful than any 
king or noble in France. There was another dreary de- 
scendant of Charlemagne named Louis, who was called the 
Foreigner, because he had been brought up in England ; 
he was sometimes in prison and sometimes on the throne 
— but always in misery. And there was another Lothair, 
who is chiefly remembered as the monarch who agreed that 
Alsace and Lorraine should belong to Germany and not to 
France. But greater and abler than all of these was the 
son of Hugh the White, who is known in history as Hugh 
Capet, and w^as chosen by a national assembly of bishops 
and nobles at Rheims, in the year 987, to be King of France. 



Chapter VII 

THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 
A.D. 950-987 

In all the miserable old days of confusion and war and 
pillage, the one who suffered most was the peasant. Ev- 
erybody robbed him. He was lucky, where a body of 
armed men passed his way, if they did not force him to 
join them, and go out a-warring for a cause which was 
not his, leaving his wife and children to starve. As to 
his crops, he had to harvest them by stealth, and hide 
them when they were harvested, to save them from being 
stolen by some rough-rider. After a time his hardships at 
the hands of rival kings of his own race, or Northmen in 
the ISTorth, or Moors in the South, became so unbearable 
that he was of necessity driven to unite with his neighbors 
for common defence ; and out of this union grew the sys- 
tem called the feudal system, of which you must under- 
stand something, if you wish to know French history. The 
way of it was this : 

After a smiling valley or pleasant village had been raid- 
ed by fighters or robbers, the people would meet together 
and agree with each other thai isenceforth they would stand 
shoulder to shoulder, and give manful battle to the next 
robber who came their way ; they would choose the bravest 
and wisest among them to be their leader. In order to dis- 
tinguish him from the rest, he should be called lord, or 
seigneur, duke, count, or baron. In order that he should 
stand loyally by the peasants, and not betray them or di- 
vide their substance with raiders, it was agreed all the 
land should be his, and that the peasant should hold it on 
lease from him. But the rent was to be merely nominal — 
4 




A noble's castle in the mountains 

as, for instance, a quart of grain, a sucking pig, or a fat 
goose once a year for a field or an acre ; there was very- 
little money at that time in the country parts of France. 
Furthermore, it was agreed that whenever the lord called 
upon these tenants of his to turn out and fight, they were 
bound to do so ; and whenever they called upon him to 
protect them against robbers, or rough-riders, or North- 
men, or Moors, he was bound to do so. This was the feu- 



950-987J 51 

dal system, which, though it was greatly abused in later 
years, was an admirable contrivance at the time it was in- 
vented, and gave France many years of peace, wealth, and 
power. The land which was owned by the feudal lords 
and leased to their tenants was called a fief, and the ten- 
ants were called vassals. Of these fiefs there were one 
hundred and fifty in the time of Hugh Capet ; indeed, 
there was very little land in the kingdom which was not 
included in some fief, and the plan struck those smart rob- 
bers, the Northmen, as so good that they adopted it, and 
established fiefs of their own, with robber chiefs as feudal 
lords over them. One of these lords called himself Duke 
of Normandy ; you will often hear of his descendants in 
the course of this history. 

In course of time, and by degrees, these feudal lords 
came to be kings in fact, if not in name, in their respective 
fiefs. They had their own armies, their own courts, their 
own mints, their own system of taxes, their own laws — 
quite independent of the king at Paris ; they were, it is 
true, required to pay homage to the king, which consisted 
in holding his stirrup when he went riding, or some such 
idle formality ; but practically the king had no authority 
over them at all. The peasants knew no superior but their 
own feudal lord. 

The kingdom which Hugh Capet was called upon to 
reign over was thus cut down to a small piece of the Em- 
pire which Charlemagne had ruled, and only a small bit of 
modern France. It took in the valleys of the Seine and 
the Loire, but not Rouen or Nantes, or anything east of 
the Rhine, or south of the Loire, or w^est of the Mayenne. 
The Duke of Aquitaine, who was a feudal lord, ruled a 
much larger country, and so did the Duke of Burgundy, 
who was another. 

The system suited neither the king nor the Church. 
Hugh Capet constantly found himself crossed by feudal 
lords as powerful as he and very jealous of their power. 
As for the Church, it had gone out of politics, and the 




DEPENDING A BATTLEMENT 



priests were rainding their proper business of preaching 
and praying. A bishop was no better than any'^one e "f 
Kxcept that he could still refuse to baptize a cild or to 

still claimed to be able to sentence his enemies to millions 
of years of torment i„ another world, he was noTof as 



950-987] 53 

much consequence as a valiant man-at-arms. So the 
priests looked sourly on the feudal lords, and as for Hugh 
Capet, he could hardly keep his hands off them. 

Neither could do much, however. A feudal count or baron 
thought nothing of locking up a bishop for a dozen years 
in an underground dungeon and appointing his butler to 
take his place ; and as for the king, when he ventured to 
take a feudal lord to task, the reply came quick, " Pray, 
who made you king ?" 

But the king and the priests became fast friends. 
When a Prince of Lorraine came to Rheims with his 
young wife, to see if there was any chance of getting a 
crown in France, the priests sent secret information to 
Hugh, who seized the prince and his wife while they were 
praying in the cathedral during Holy Week, and had them 
carried off to Orleans, where the prince soon died. 

And, in order to show the people how much he thought 
of the Church, Hugh Capet would never wear kingly robes, 
but always appeared in public in the gown of an abbot, 
having been at one time Abbot of St. Martin at Tours. 
His last injunction to his son on his death-bed was to stand 
by the Church, and never to allow the nobles to despoil it; 
for, he said, no matter how^ well these feudal lords may get 
on at first, you may depend upon it that the Church will 
win in the end. 

We shall see, as this history goes on, how near this 
prophecy came to the truth. 



Chapter YIII 

THE END OF THE WORLD 
A.D. 996-1000 

In the year of Our Lord 996, Hugh Capet died, and his 
son Robert succeeded him. Now, it was the belief of good 
Christians that the world was to come to an end, and that 
the Day of Judgment was to come in the year 1000. This 
curious notion had been formed by putting on certain texts 
in the Bible a meaning which they cannot bear ; the de- 
lusion had lasted so long that it was deeply rooted, and a 
man who doubted it was set down as no better than an in- 
fidel. In every church throughout Christendom priests 
preached about the end of the world as a thing fixed and 
settled, and in view of which devout Christians should put 
their souls in order against the coming of the Lord. 

As if this was not enough to make people downhearted, 
famines and epidemic diseases broke out in many places. 
You know very well that famines are caused by crop fail- 
ures, and that when laborers are taken from their farms to 
become soldiers crops are apt to fail. You also know that 
famines, when people have not enough to eat or when they 
have to eat poor food, are almost sure to be followed by 
outbreaks of disease, especially in places where the drain- 
age is bad. So you can account for the famines and the 
pestilences in a very simple way. But nine hundred years 
ago people did not know as much as you do, and they 
ignorantly supposed that famine and pestilence were the 
works of an angry God. The priesthood proclaimed that 
they were a warning from God to prepare for the end of 
the world. 

I suppose that there never was a time in the history of 



996-1000] 55 

France when the people were more miserable than they 
were then. Starving people ate rats, roots and bark of 
trees, grass, and human bodies. Little children were lured 
into lonely places, killed, and eaten. A butcher in a small 
town offered human flesh for sale on his stall. The judge 
had him arrested — he was sentenced to be burned to death. 
On the night of his burial his roasted body was dug up 
and was eaten by a hungry man, who was caught at it and 
was burned to death too. One man, who kept an inn in a 
forest, killed and ate his guests — forty-eight skulls were 
found in his cellar. Everybody was lean and hungry but 
the wolves — they grew fat. 

When the pestilence broke out, no one knew how to cure 
it. The doctors were as ignorant as the rest. The only 
remedy that was advised was to go on a pilgrimage to a 
church and do penance. Thousands of poor stricken creat- 
ures, and other thousands who were still well but in dread 
of the disease, took the advice and crowded the churches 
and the graveyards round them. At Limoges the crowd 
grew so dense that those who were well took the disease 
from those who were sick, and they died together in heaps, 
poisoning the air. The priests did what they could : they 
brought out their best relics, from all parts of France, and 
waved them over the sufferers, trying to drive the disease 
away. But I need not tell you that the poor sick people 
went on dying as before. 

Then men and women believed that the end of the world 
was coming in reality. Those who were in business shut 
up their shops. Those who had farms gave them to the 
Church. Those who had money laid it on the shrine of 
some saint, as though they could buy a place in heaven as 
you buy a place at the theatre. Every one spent his days 
in prayer — in a church if he could get in, and when the 
churches were all filled on the open roadside. It was not 
the poor and ignorant only who gave way to terrors. The 
Duke of Normandy got a friar's robe and insisted on be- 
coming a monk. The Duke of Burgundy would have done 



56 [996-1000 

the like, but was forbidden by the pope. The Emperor 
Henry went to the abbey at Verdun, and was actually 
admitted as a monk ; but the abbot, who was a man of 
common-sense, set him the penance of going home and 
attending to his business as emperor. 

I must say that the priests behaved very well at this 
trying time. They believed — as other people did — that the 
end of the world was at hand, but they faithfully and in- 
trepidly attended to their work, and when people confessed 
to them with open and contrite hearts they insisted that 
their penitents should forswear quarrelling and lighting, 
stealing, drinking, and riotous behavior in future. They 
got a great deal of land through the ignorant terrors of the 
people ; but, as it turned out, they did a great deal of 
good in return for it. 

And the year 1000 came, and throughout every week 
and every month of it men looked to the sky for the com- 
ing of the angel of the Lord. But I need not tell you that 
the sky was just as serene as ever, nor were there any un- 
usual storms or strange appearances. And when October 
and November and December passed, and yet the world 
stood where it was, and no fire nor flood from heaven 
marked the beginning of the end, the priests took courage 
to say that by reason of the penitence of the people a 
merciful God had stayed his hand, and that the world 
might endure a little longer. Many centuries had to elapse 
before people knew that the planets which have been 
planted in this universe are born, and flourish, and die in 
obedience to fixed laws of which we cannot measure the 
duration or the working. But in 1001 mankind breathed 
more freely when they found that the sun rose and set, and 
the winds blew, and the rains fell, and the earth continued 
to yield her increase, just as all these things had occurred 
throughout the memory of man. 



Chapter IX 

KING AND POPE 
A.D. 996-1031 

Robert, King of France, son of Hugh Capet, had been 
educated by the Archbishop of Rheims — who afterward 
became pope — and was, for that day, a learned and refined 
man. He was an excellent musician and a good architect. 
He knew so much of mechanics that he was suspected of 
being a sorcerer, as the archbishop his teacher had been 
when he made a clock for his cathedral. He was devout, 
kind, just, and gentle, the first king of France, I think, 
whom you can really like. 

But his life was a sad one. Before he became king he 
married Bertha, who was daughter of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy and widow of the Count of Blois — a lovely woman 
to whom he was tenderly attached. Now Bertha was 
Robert's fourth cousin, and had besides been godmother 
to a child whose godfather Robert was. The Emperor of 
Germany objected to the marriage, because he feared it 
would lead to a union between France and Burgundy, 
and would defeat schemes he had himself laid to get hold 
of the duchy. So he persuaded the pope to declare the 
marriage null and void, on the ground that Robert and 
Bertha were too closely related to marry. Robert flatly 
refused to part with his dear wife. 

On this the pope issued a decree ordering Robert to re- 
nounce his wife and do penance for seven years. "If he 
refuse to obey," said the decree, "let him be anathema." 

Robert did refuse. Nothing, he said, should part him 
from the woman he loved. 

Then the pope laid his liingdom under an interdict, All 



58 [996-1031 

the churches were closed and the bells muffled. The 
pictures of the Crucifixion and of the saints were taken down 
and wrapped in canvas. The statues were laid on beds of 
thorns and ashes. A couple of young lovers, coming hand 
in hand to the priest to be married, were driven roughly 
away. A mother, bringing her infant to be baptized, was 
not allowed to approach the font, and was ordered out of 
the church. The relations of a dead person could not in 
any way induce a priest to say a prayer over the body as 
it was lowered into the grave. All this because the Pope 
of Rome wanted to help the Emperor of Germany in his 
designs on the Duchy of Burgundy. 

The interdict lay more heavily on the king than any one 
else. He was pronounced to be anathema — an accursed 
thing. No one could talk to him or keep his company. 
The clothes he had worn, the dishes out of which he had 
eaten, the cups out of which he had drunk, were thrown 
into the fire and burned. If any one touched him in pass- 
ing he had to go home and wash all over. When people 
saw him coming they ran away. 

You may fancy how this dreadful curse of the pope's 
distressed the ignorant people of France. They were in- 
tensely religious, and they believed that an unbaptized 
person who died without the sacrament, or had no prayers 
said at his funeral, would endure ev6rlasting torment in 
the world to come, in lakes of fire and brimstone. They 
loved their king, and they stood by him in his resolve to 
keep his wife ; but the interdict laid upon them more than 
they could bear. They flocked to the king, and besought 
him to relieve them of a hardship which made their lives 
a burden and a curse. 

Robert would have fought the pope to the end, but he 
could not resist his people. He put away his wife. And 
not only that. At the earnest demand of the French, who 
wanted an heir to the throne so as to avoid civil war here- 
after, he married another — a dreadful woman named Con- 
stance. But his heart was always faithful to the wife of 




SWEARING ON RELICS 



his youth, and when he died, thirty years afterward, her 
name was on his lips. 

After his surrender to the Church he was in high favor 
with the priests, and according to the church chronicles 
many miracles were wrought in his honor. New churches 
were built all over the country, and old ones restored : 
and in many cases the finishing touches to these buildings 



60 [996-1031 

were given by atigels, who came down from heaven for the 
purpose, I suppose, with paint-pots under their wings. Of 
course the priests, among whom were good architects, 
clever painters, and gifted sculptors, had nothing to do 
with them. At least, they said they had not. In odd places 
queer old bones were dug up, which the bishops at once 
recognized as relics of saints who had died hundreds of 
years before; angels again — what would they have done 
without angels? — confidentially told the bishops that these 
relics had been kept hid for all these years on purpose that 
they should be discovered in the reign of Robert, who was 
so good a churchman. 

He was besieging a castle which held out with courage 
and baffled his best efforts. On a certain day during the 
siege he left his camp, entered the church of St. Denis, and 
led the choir in singing a hymn. At the very moment the 
hymn ended the walls of the castle fell down, and he qui- 
etly walked in when the service was over. 

Robert's heart was so full of kindness that he couldn't 
punish a thief if he was poor. When a ragged beggar 
was caught stealing some silver from the royal lance, he 
thrust the silver hastily into the thief's wallet and bade 
him begone, lest the queen should find him ; and when she 
asked what had become of the silver, he answered, with a 
vacant look, that he really could not tell. 

A monk stole a silver candlestick from an altar, and the 
king saw him. When the queen heard of it, she flew into 
a passion and swore that she would have the eyes torn out 
of the keepers' heads if they did not discover the thief. 
On this Robert went to the monk saying, " Haste thee 
hence, my friend, lest my Constance eat thee up." And 
he gave him money to take him home. 

A rascal once crept under the table where he was dining 
and cut off a gold ornament which hung from his belt. 
The queen missed the ornament and asked, " What enemy 
of God has dishonored your gold-adorned robe ?" 

The king laughed and replied, "Probably some one 



996-1031] 61 

who wanted the ornament more than I did ; with God to 
aid, it will be of more service to him than it was to me." 

Like most religious men in his day, he thought that an 
oath taken on a relic was more sacred than a common 
oath. It was the custom to make the nobles of his court 
take an oath of allegiance on a box in which there was a 
relic of great power, Robert noticed how many of these 
oaths were broken. To save the nobles from committing 
mortal sin, he took the relic out and put an egg in its 
place. Now, said he, they can forswear themselves with- 
out dooming their souls to eternal damnation. As though 
a false oath sworn over an egg was less wicked than a false 
oath sworn over a dead man's finger-bone ! 

All this while Robert was unhappy with his wife. She 
was a Southern woman, fond of gayety and dancing and 
frolic, which the king abhorred. She had brought with 
her from the South a number of gentlemen and ladies 
who, like her, wanted to lead merry lives. They got up 
revel after revel, and laughed at Robert because he refused 
to take part in them. Their appearance was strange to 
the Parisians. The men shaved their chins, cut their hair 
short, and wore boots which turned up at the toes ; they 
affected to be dandies, and sneered at the rough manners 
of the Northern friends of Robert. The king would have 
sent them home, but the queen, whom Robert called " my 
Constance," had a way of flying into rages, when every 
one, including her husband, made haste to get out of her 
reach ; and so her Southern court remained to the end. 

She was so violent a woman that when two priests were 
accused of being heretics, because they differed from their 
bishops on points of doctrine, and were sentenced to be 
burned at the stake, she insisted on going out of her pal- 
ace to see them pass by. One of them was known to the 
queen ; at sight of him she flew into a rage, and, seizing 
an iron-tipped stick from the hand of an attendant, she 
knocked the poor priest's eye out with a blow. 

Toward the end of his reign, the brutal temper of this 




QUEEN CONSTANCE STRIKES OUT A PEIEST'S EYE 

woman and the growing impudence of the feudal lords 
made life bitter to the king. He could do nothing for 
himself, for the queen ruled him as if he had been a child ; 
and he could do little for the people, for the feudal lords 
would have no interference with their vassals. So per- 
haps he was not sorry when the end came, after he had 
reigned over France for thirty-five years. 



Chapter X 

ROBERT THE DEVIL 
A.D. 1031-1060 

The most powerful feudal lord in France at this time 
was the Duke of Normandy. His name was Robert. He 
was the second son of his father, and therefore would not 
naturally have succeeded to the duchy ; but he invited his 
elder brother and several other friends to a banquet, and 
next morning they were all found dead in their beds. For 
this dreadful deed the Normans gave him the name of 
Robert the Devil. His story inspired one of the greatest 
composers of modern times with the idea of an opera which 
I dare say you have seen. 

When King Robert of France died in the year 1031 — as I 
told you in the last chapter — he left two sons: Henry, who 
was the eldest, and Robert. Their mother, the bad Queen 
Constance, insisted that Robert should succeed, because he 
was her favorite. Henry appealed to the pope, who answer- 
ed that he was the rightful heir. But Constance and Robert 
took the field at the head of the army and set Henry and 
his friend the pope at defiance. Then Henry sent to Rob- 
ert the Devil, who was never so happy as when he was 
fighting, and asked him whether he would help him. 

Robert the Devil replied, " With all my heart." 

For he had set his heart on a corner of France which 
he thought would fit nicely into Normandy ; and he had re- 
solved to make this corner, which was called the Vezin, 
the price of his services. 

He kept his word. Robert the Devil met Robert the 
Prince in three battles and utterly defeated him. His 
jnother, wicked Constance, flew into such rages at being 



64 [1031-1060 

baffled in her object — she had not often been crossed in 
her angry life — that she went home and died. Her son 
Robert disappeared, Henry was acknowledged by every 
one as lawful king of France under the name of Henry the 
First, and the Duke of Normandy got the Vezin country 
which he had coveted. 

But just then there broke out another of those dreadful 
famines which were always befalling France, partly be- 
cause the peasants, under their feudal lords, would go on 
fighting, although they had promised the priests they 
would do so no more. When they neglected to plough 
and manure their fields the crops were sure to be short. 
There was no grain anywhere, and in whole districts peo- 
ple starved to death. So many unburied corpses lay by 
the road-side that the wolves feasted on human flesh ; and 
having acquired the taste of it, began to attack the living. 
The feudal lords had to turn out at the head of their sol- 
diers to fight the ferocious beasts. 

The bishops declared that the famine was a visitation 
from God to punish the people for their wickedness. They 
were brave enough to tell the Duke of Normandy to his 
face that it was God's punishment for the crimes which 
had won him the name of Robert the Devil. He was ter 
ribly frightened. His conscience smote him and told Km. 
that the bishops were probably right. So he humbled him- 
self and besought them to tell him how he could make 
atonement before God. 

"You must go on foot," said the bishops, "to the tomb 
of Christ in the country of Palestine and there do penance 
for your sins." 

You will probably think that it was an excellent idea to 
have him do penance — he had sins enough, in all conscience, 
to repent of — but why the penance and repentance could 
not have been done at home, where they might have serve'd 
as an example to others, it is not so easy to see. But the 
bishops insisted on Palestine, and to Palestine he went. 

It is a long walk from Kovmandy to Palestine, and Rob- 



1031-1060] 65 

ert the Devil had to find his way over river, mountain, 
bog, and wild, besides escaping the clutches of fierce races 
which regarded strangers as natural prey. But Robert 
overcame or eluded them all, and in due time found him 
self at the place where Christ had been buried over a thou- 
sand years before. It was a barren, sandy spot, with a few 
valleys in which vines grew and slopes on which olives 
still spread their twisted branches to the sky. Here and 
there were square forts, with loop-holes out of which bow- 
men shot arrows, and flat roofs on which the soldiers slept 
in the cool night breezes. The country was owned by the 
Moors or Saracens, who were followers of Mohammed 
and did not believe in Christianity. 

When Robert asked them could he do penance on the 
tomb of Christ, they answered, "Why not?" 

And he said all the prayers and made all the confessions 
he wanted without hindrance, the Moors sitting silently 
by and gravely watching him. 

Then he turned his face homeward, but before he could 
get back into Europe he fell ill and died. So there was 
an end of his history. 

But he left behind him a son who became more famous 
than he, both in France and in England. This was Will- 
iam, who is called William the Conqueror, because he con- 
quered England in the year 1066. His mother was a poor 
tanner's daughter, with whom Robert had fallen in love as 
he watched her washing clothes in a brook. She never be- 
came Robert's wife, nor is there much said of her in the 
histories of her famous son. William not only conquered 
England and made it Norman, setting up Norman lords 
to govern the English, and the Norman tongue in the place 
of the Anglo-Saxon tongue which the people then spoke, 
but he became more powerful in France than the king, and 
his history is, perhaps, better entitled to be considered the 
history of France in his day than is the history of Henry 
the First, Regent Baldwin, and Philip the First, who were 
the nominal rulers of the kingdom during his time, 
5 



Chapter XI 

PHILIP THE FIRST 

A.D. 1060-1108 

When Henry the First died, his son and successor, 
Philip the First, was only eight years old, but his father 
had chosen Baldwin of Flanders to be his guardian ; and, as 
he was a prudent man, no serious trouble befell France 
while Philip was growing up. But when he grew to man- 
hood he met with trouble enough. 

William, the son of Robert the Devil, had become King 
of England as well as Duke of Normandy, and with him 
Philip picked a quarrel. His choice of an enemy was un- 
lucky : William fought him time and again, and the King 
of France was always beaten. After one of these defeats 
Philip made some coarse joke about William's size : he 
was fat, and his stomach was prodigious. The joke was 
repeated to William, who flew into a rage, invaded Philip's 
dominions, and took and burned the town of Nantes. You 
will perceive that whenever these kings or dukes quar- 
relled, it was their subjects who paid the penalty. As he 
rode over the burning ruins of Nantes, William's horse 
trod on a hot cinder and started, throwing his rider on 
the pommel of the saddle. William was carried into a 
house and died of the injury. So Philip was rid of his 
worst enemy. 

But another soon took his place. The pope of that day 
is called in history Gregory the Seventh. But he is best 
known by the name he bore before he became pope — which 
was Hildebrand. He was imperious and domineering and 
really believed that he was head not only of the Church, 
but also of the world. He led a pure life himself and in- 



1060-1108] 67 

sisted that all others should do the like. Unfaithful bish- 
ops and priests he punished without mercy. It was he who 
put a stop to the marriage of priests. He resolved to set 
the popes above all the kings of the earth, and he very 
nearly succeeded. He quarrelled with the kings of Hun- 
gary, Poland, and Spain, and insulted them — daring them 
to resent the insult. He defied the Emperor of Germany 
and kept up the defiance till he died. He turned on Philip 
of France and bullied him, threatening him with all the 
curses of the Church, which at that time was rich in curses. 

Philip most certainly deserved to be bullied. He was a 
poor weak creature, who was always doing wrong, begging 
pardon for it, promising not to do so any more, and then 
straightway repeating the offence. He had a good wife. 
Bertha of Flanders, who had born him several children ; he 
put her away and locked her up in a castle at Montreuil. 
Then he fell in love with another man's wife — Bertrade of 
Anjou — and persuaded her to elope with him. She, being 
proud, insisted on being married to the king. He issued 
his orders to the bishops, and they performed the ceremony, 
though Philip's Avife was still living in her lonesome prison. 

On this the pope boldly excommunicated both the king 
and the lady, Philip cringed and crawled in his usual 
mean way : he laid down his crown and scei3tre, and prom- 
ised to give up Bertrade, on which the pope withdrew his 
excommunication. But it was no sooner withdrawn than 
Philip took Bertrade back and went on governing as be- 
fore. 

A great council was held at Clermont, about a matter 
of which I shall tell you in the next chapter. All the clergy 
were present, including the pope. It was not Hildebrand — 
who had been driven out of Italy by the Emperor of Ger- 
many and had died a fugitive, saying with his last breath, 
"I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and there- 
fore I die in exile " — but his successor Urban. This pope 
again excommunicated Philij> and declared that any place 
that harbored him or Bertrade should be laid under an in- 



68 [1060-1108 

terdict ; whereupon Philip made a great show of putting 
her away, but when the pope's back was turned he went 
to live with her as before and had her formally crowned 
as queen. 

People despised him so much that they had ceased to 
pay attention to him, when his poor deserted wife Bertha 
died in her prison. Many angry words were then spoken, 
and it might have gone ill with the king if the French had 
not had something else to think of at that time. As it 
was, he idled his life in feasting and hunting with his fair 
Bertrade, and paid not the least attention to the affairs of 
the kingdom, when one day he was seized with an agoniz- 
ing disease. The doctors, who in those days did not 
know much about disease, pronounced that this one must 
be mortal. And they bade the poor shuffling king prepare 
for death. 

He cowered and shivered, and finding that he could not 
be cured, he bethought himself of his soul, and once more 
sent abject letters of entreaty to the pope for relief from 
excommunication — for he had been excommunicated again. 
Once more the pope revoked his decree, on the condition 
that Philip should do penance. The king promised, and 
this time he kept his word — perhaps the more willingly 
because the pope allowed Bertrade to remain with him to 
nurse him. As he grew worse he laid down his kingly 
power, became a Benedictine monk, and spent his days in 
prayer and humiliation. He used to go about in sackcloth 
and ashes, and to beg people, with tears in his eyes, to 
pray for him. For once his contrition was sincere. As 
his end approached he gave orders that his body be not 
laid beside the other kings of France ; he said he was not 
worthy to rest in such company — in which opinion I think 
you will agree with him, 



Chapter XII 

THE FIRST CRUSADE 

A.D. 1094-1137 

In the year 1094, a poor French priest, named Peter, 
who, as was a common custom in those days, had been 
on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, returned to France with his 
heart full of rage and grief at the sufferings which pilgrims 
like himself had to endure. The Holy Land was in the pos- 
session of followers of Mohammed — Arabs and Turks, who 
in that day were often called Moors or Moslems or Saracens. 
They hated Christianity, and when they found that Chris- 
tian pilgrims made long journeys to pray on the Saviour's 
tomb, they sometimes required them to spit on it before 
they would allow them to kneel. If the pilgrims carried 
anything worth stealing, the Moslems stole it ; if they were 
empty-handed, the Moslems often killed them. That such 
a people should own the land where Christ had lived and 
died seemed to Father Peter and to other devout Chris- 
tians an unbearable outrage. Peter came back from the 
Holy Land burning with zeal to wrest Jerusalem out of 
the hands of the infidels. 

He found Pope Urban quite of his mind. A great meet- 
ing was held at Clermont, in France, at which four hundred 
bishops and mitred abbots, as many feudal lords, and thou- 
sands of the common people were present. Pope and pil- 
grim called upon everybody to enlist in the war for the 
cross, or, as it was then called, the Crusade. 

The idea took like wildfire. Almost every one pinned 
on his right shoulder a cross of red or white stuff. Feudal 
lords sold lands and jewels, and pledged what they could 
not sell for loans of money to outfit themselves an(^ their 



70 [1094-113'7 

vassals. Common people gave up their trade and their 
work to enlist in the Crusading army. Nobody thought of 
anything but Jerusalem. Men left their homes and their 
wives and their children to march under the banner of some 
fighting baron. People ran through the streets shouting, 
" It is the will of God ! It is the will of God !" 

Yery few people knew how far Jerusalem was, or how 
they were to get there. Nobody knew how many Turks 
or Moslems they would have to fight. Hardly any one 
had any fixed plan as to how they were to get home. They 
were simply wild to drive the infidels out of the Holy Land 
and to place the tomb of Christ in Christian hands. The 
wildness was so general that, according to the histories of 
the times, nearly nine hundred thousand men started for 
the Holy Land. I think myself that the figure is large. 

There is no doubt that all through the summer of 1096 
armies set out for Jerusalem. One of these, in front of 
which Peter the Hermit marched, in a brown woollen gown 
with a cord round his waist, is said to have been one hun- 
dred thousand strong when it set out, but by the time it 
reached Asia, disease, hunger, hardship, and battle had so 
thinned its ranks that there were only three thousand left. 

The great armj^, which was led by Godfrey of Bouillon, 
started in August, 1096. It marched into Germany, fol- 
lowed the valley of the Danube to the country which was 
then the Empire of the East, made some stay at its capital — 
Constantinople — crossed the Bosphorus, worked its way 
south through Asia Minor, and finally appeared before Jeru- 
salem in July, 1099, having been nearly three years on the 
way. Throughout this weary journey the Crusaders had 
fought every inch of their way, for they had to steal the 
food on which they lived, and in every country they trav- 
ersed the people rose up in arms. To get victuals they 
had to rob town and country ; thus every man's hand 
was against them, and when they reached Constantinople 
their own was literally dripping with blood. 

Constantinople, which had formerly been known as By- 




PETER THE HERMIT PREACHING A CRUSADE 



zantium, was the capital of the Eastern Empire. It was the 
most splendid city in Europe, perhaps more splendid than 
Rome had ever been. It was full of fine churches, noble 
palaces, marble houses, beautiful statues, and gilded domes. 
Rows of stores displayed rich stuffs, jewels, and arms, such 
as the men of France had never conceived. To these jewels 
and stuffs, and especially to the arms, the Crusaders be- 
gan to help themselves. Some robbed the palaces and the 
churches. Many thought Constantinople would be as good 
a stopping-place as Jerusalem. But the Byzantines were 
cunning and tricky. 

When the emperor, whose name was Alexius, asked God- 
frey what he wanted, and was answered that he wanted 
ships and boats to ferry his army over into Asia, a fleet 
quite large enougli for the purpose was ready next day. 



1^ [1094-1137 

And when the Crusaders lingered, having never seen so 
much plunder before in one spot, a curious disease broke 
out among them, and they began to die in prodigious num- 
bers. It is said that the wells and the bread had been 
poisoned. Then the survivors embarked for Asia, not 
however till they had killed the emperor's pet lion, and 
taken the lead from the roofs of the churches to barter for 
food on their coming journey. 

Down south, over parched plains, sandy wastes, and hills 
on which no herb grew, with clouds of Arab horsemen 
circling round them, and cutting off every one who strayed 
from the main body, the Crusaders marched, their number 
growing less day by day. At one spot five hundred men 
died of thirst. At another a squadron of Turkish troopers 
swooped down on a tired regiment and sabred every one. 
There was a little comfort when Antioch was reached — An- 
tioch, the gay and rich city, with its three hundred and 
sixty churches and its four hundred and fifty towers — but 
when the starving Crusaders found themselves once more 
in a land of plenty they ate so ravenously that disease 
again broke out among them, and tlie generals ordered the 
march to go on. This time the men refused. They lay 
down on the floors of houses where they had taken shelter, 
and the houses had to be fired to get them out. Then a 
trooper declared that by digging in a certain spot the very 
lance which had pierced our Saviour's side could be found, 
pointing to Jerusalem. And he offered to make good his 
assertion by submitting to the ordeal of fire. He did, in 
fact, enter the flames and was duly burned, as might have 
been expected. But the lance was found for all that, and 
on the army marched. At last, when patience and cour- 
age were both nearly exhausted, on a sultry day in July, 
through the hot, palpitating air of the desert, over a plain 
where a few tufts of grass peered through clefts in the 
rocks, the flat roofs of Jerusalem were seen. 

How many of the Crusaders were left at that time it is 
hard to say. One account says sixty thousand, another 




ATTACKING THE SARACENS IN THEIR MOSQUE 

only twenty-five — in either case a small remnant of those 
who had set out from France with the red-and- white cross 
on their right shoulders. A movable tower was built to 
overtop the walls of the city, and when it was nearly fin- 
ished the Crusaders marched round the walls, barefoot and 
waving crosses. This they kept up for eight days. Then 
the tower was run up to the city gate, the Crusaders poured 



74 [1094-113Y 

out, opened the gate, Jerusalem was taken, and every liv- 
ing creature in the place was killed. At last the Crusad- 
ers declared that their work was accomplished. They left 
Godfrey of Bouillon with three hundred knights to rule the 
conquered city and returned home. 

Many of them died by the way. Those who lived to see 
their homes again found France much changed. The king 
was called Louis the Fat. He may have been fat, but he 
was wise and wary as well. 

At the time he came to the throne the feudal lords had 
become so overbearing that, except in a few cities, the king 
was only king in name. They led expeditions to pillage 
their neighbors. They built towers by the road-side and 
would let no one pass till he paid toll. No man's house, 
nor his purse, nor his daughter, was safe from them. And 
the king was helpless. But when most of these lords had 
gone off to the Crusade at the head of their marauding vas- 
sals, the king took advantage of their absence to pull down 
some of their towers, to put his own men into some of 
their castles, and to punish very thoroughly the robbers 
and murderers without asking leave of their lords. 

There was one impudent baron named Montlery, who 
had built a castle on the Orleans Road and took toll from 
passers-by. He went to the Crusade, and while he was 
away the king tore his castle down. There was a Count 
of Anjou who was constantly making war against his neigh- 
bors on his own account. He was a vain man, and once 
asked the king if he might have the sole right of laying 
the royal dinner-table ? 

Louis the Fat replied : Yes, he might lay the dishes on 
the table and no one else should. 

Whereupon the Count of Anjou became a good friend 
to the king and undertook no more private wars. 

In this way Louis the Fat so managed matters that he 
was able to go from Paris to Orleans or Rheims without 
having an army at his back, and it was actually said that 
a merchant could cross the forest of Montmorency without 



^/77/'/;^imppii'Piwiraipiiii^ffliiiiirf 




1094-1137] 77 

having a man-at-arms in front of him with lance in rest. 
Strange times, when such signs of order were thought won- 
derful proofs of progress. 

The last years of Louis the Fat were unhappy. His 
heart was wn-apped up in liis son Philip, who was to succeed 
him, but one day, as the youth rode through the streets of 
Paris, a pig got between his horse's feet, the animal threw 
him heavily to the ground, and he died that night. His 
father almost went mad with grief. His second son, Louis, 
was consecrated as his heir ; the sacred oil was poured on 
his head by the pope himself ; but the father never ceased 
to mourn his eldest born, and was a sad man to the day of 
his death. 

He died in 1137, after a reign of twenty -nine years. 
You will remember him as one of the good kings of France. 
There was more rest and safety among the poor peasantry 
under his reign than there had been for many years before ; 
he taught the feudal barons that there was a power greater 
than theirs, and that laws were made for the strong as well 
as for the weak. He owed much throughout his life to the 
counsels of a good and wise priest named the Abbot Suger. 

This abbot built a splendid monastery at St. Denis and 
lived in it, occupying one room fifteen feet long by ten 
wide ; he slept on a bed of straw, covered with a single 
woollen counterpane. In that room he governed France, 
in the king's name, for years ; he was never guilty of in- 
justice to an)' man, nor did he ever excuse wrong or fear 
earthly power. Ah ! if there had been in those days more 
abbots like him ! 



Chapter XIII 

A TALE OF TWO FAIR WOMEN 

A.D. 1137-1180 

Louis the Seventh, who is called in French history 
Louis the Young, was eighteen when he became king. He 
had been educated by the good Abbot Suger, who, you may 
be sure, taught him nothing but what a king should know. 
But he had the ill-fortune to marry the wrong woman, and 
she proved his evil genius. 

This woman was Eleanor of Aquitaine, a beautiful, witty, 
spoiled child of the South. From her childhood she had 
been petted and flattered ; poets had written sonnets about 
her ; gay gallants had ridden by her side, telling her that 
she was the most bewitching and delightful and ravishing 
creature the world had ever seen. She grew up believing 
this flattery, as I believe girls sometimes do even in our 
time ; and she became an imperious, self-willed young lady, 
so fond of pleasure and music and merriment that she 
thought of nothing else. When she married the heir to 
the crown of France, who was only eighteen, she felt that 
she was going to lead a joyous life ; and she quite declined 
to take advice from good Abbot Suger, who was a serious 
man, and did not like frivolities. 

Not long after her marriage she got Louis into trouble. 
The pope appointed an archbishop of Bourges in Aquitaine. 
Eleanor said that Bourges was her city, and that the pope 
liad no right to give its archbishopric away. She ordered 
that a new archbishop should be chosen, and her hus- 
band said she was quite right. Then the pope excommuni- 
cated Louis. 

Just before that he had excommunicated a sister of 




A MINSTREL SINGING TO THE COURT OF ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE 

Eleanor's for marrying a man who had a wife already. 
To avenge her sister, Eleanor persuaded Louis to invade 
Champagne, which was full of the pope's friends, and in 
the course of the march the king's troops set fire to the 
town of Vitry. A large number of the people of Vitry — 
about thirteen hundred, men, women, and children— took 
refuge in the cathedral. The flames reached the building, 
and, the doors having got jammed, every one of the thirteen 
hundred was burned to death. The king, who rode np as 
the church was burning, heard their dying shrieks an4 



80 , [IIST-IISO 

groans. He was not a bad young man. He was filled 
with horror at the wrong he had done. He begged pardon 
of God and the pope and offered to perform any penance 
that might be set him. 

Just then came news from the Holy Land that the 
Saracens had gathered a great force and marched upon 
the city of Edessa, where many Christians lived, and had 
massacred every one. The pope declared that the time 
had come for a new Crusade — as though the result of. the 
last one had been so satisfactory. Louis w^as not in favor 
of it, and the Abbot Suger was quite opposed to the 
scheme. He told the king that his first duty was to his 
own people. But Eleanor was frantic to lead a Crusade, 
and everybody gave way to her imperious will. 

On Easter Day another great national council was held, 
this time on the slope of a hill overlooking the town of 
Vezelai in Burgundy. Scores of counts, and barons, and 
bishops, and abbots, all with their men-at-arms by their sides, 
their banners waving in the air, and thousands of the 
common people gathered on the hill, while above them, 
on a raised platform, sat the king and the proud and 
beautiful Queen Eleanor, and beside them a thin, pale-faced 
monk with burning eyes. When all were silent, this pale 
monk — his name was Bernard — rose and poured out a 
torrent of fiery words about the shame and disgrace of 
allowing the Holy Land to remain in the hands of infidels. 
As had happened just fifty years before, the people went 
mad over his words. Cries of " Crosses !" " Crosses !" rose 
on all sides. Queen Eleanor seized Bernard's hand, kissed 
it before all the people, and pinned a cross on her own 
right shoulder. The king followed her example, and the 
priests and monks tore up red and white stuff they had 
brought, and their very garments, to supply the people 
with Crusaders' badges. 

It was the same old sickening story over again. The 
Crusaders — or as many as survived of the hundred thousand 
who get Qwt—fo^xidi. tbeir way into Asi^, but there the Sara* 




CRUSADERS FORDING A RIVER 



cens fell upon them and defeated them over and over again. 
By paying money out of his own pocket, Louis got some 
lielp from the Emperor of the East ; but the tricky Greek 
betrayed him to the Turks, who fell upon the remnant 
of his army as they were sleeping. The slaughter that 
ensued was so frightful that the Turks in pity stayed their 
hand at last, and nursed the wounded, while the Greeks 
sent their prisoners to Constantinople to be sold as slaves. 
Of the whole army, only Louis, Eleanor, the Emp(>ror 
Conrad, and about two hundred and fifty knights reached 
Jerusalem. Louis hastened home, for at Antioch he learn- 
ed that he had lost the love of his faithless wife. 

As soon as he reached Paris the king told the Abbot 
6 



82 [1137-1180 

Suger that he could live with his wife no more. The wise 
and good priest tried to dissuade him, saying that it was 
his duty to forgive a weak woman ; but when the abbot 
visited the weak woman he did not find her quite as weak 
as he had expected. 

"I have married a monk," she said, "not a king. I will 
live with him no more." 

After this, of course, there was nothing to be done but 
to arrange the divorce. 

You will like to hear what became of this proud and 
wicked woman. When she was divorced from Louis she 
took back the duchy of Aquitaine which she had brought 
him in marriage, and at the age of ..thirty she married 
Henry Plant^genet, who afterward became King of Eng- 
land, and brought him a dowry which, with his own duke- 
dom of Normandy, made him ruler of two thirds of France. 
But she could live at peace with no husband. She quarrel- 
led with Henry and incited his sons to rebel against him, 
whereupon he seized her and locked her up in prison for 
sixteen years. She lived to see two of her sons — Richard 
and John — crowned kings of England, and died at the age 
of eighty-one. 

There lived at this period in France another lady whose 
life was very different from hers, and who I think will be 
remembered when Eleanor, with all her beauty and all her 
pride, has been quite forgotten. This was Heloise. She 
was the niece of a canon named Fulbert, and was young, 
lovely, and gifted. Few of the learned men of the day 
knew as much as this young girl. She fell in love with 
her teacher Abelard, who, I think, was unworthy of such 
a love, though he was famous and much thought of every- 
where. But he had no more heart than a brickbat, while 
Heloise overflowed with love and tenderness and pas- 
sionate affection. They ran away. He became a Bene- 
dictine monk, and she, by his orders, became the abbess of 
a convent, where she taught religion, Greek, Latin, and 
Hebrew. He spent his life in arguing questions with the 



IISV-IISO] 83 

Other monks of tlie day, and was quite often locked up in 
jail for knowing more than other peoj^le — which I believe 
has happened since then. She was appointed by the pope 
the head of an order of nuns, and spent her life in doing 
good, teaching the ignorant, tending the sick, and always 
thinking of the one undying love of her young heart. 
When you go to Paris you will see in the eastern ceme- 
tery a nionument which covers the remains of Heloise and 
Abelard ; many years ago their bones were dug from the 
graves where they had been laid side by side, and were 
brought to Paris, so that these two who were parted in 
life might at last be united in death. 

After his divorce from Eleanor, King Louis married 
again ; and his wife dying, he took a third, who became 
the mother of the son I shall speak of in the next chap- 
ter. When the boy was fifteen years old, his father had 
a stroke of paralysis, and the doctors warned him to pre- 
pare for death. 

You will form an idea of the manners and customs of 
that day from King Louis's preparations for his death. 
The usage was that whenever the king came to Paris after 
a journey or residence elsewhere, his servants could enter 
any house in the city and lay hands upon such articles of 
clothing and such living utensils as he might want. It 
was taken for granted that the good citizens of Paris 
would be only too glad to let their king have a pair of 
trousers or a hair-brush, or a kettle, or a pair of boots — if 
he needed such things. In this Avay the king's rooms 
were generally pretty well furnished and supplied. King 
Louis now ordered all his boxes to be emptied, his drawers 
ransacked, and their contents laid upon a table. He put 
his money in one heap, his jewels in another, and his 
clothes in a third. Then he summoned all the poor people 
who lived near the palace and divided his belongings 
among them, so that every one got something, and at the 
close of the day the king l^d nothing left but the clothes 
he wore. Then he turned his face to the wall and died. 



Chapter XIV 

PHILIP AUGUSTUS 
A.D. 1180-1223 

After Louis's death another boy prince — Philip Au- 
gustus — succeeded to the throne. He reigned forty-three 
years, and he managed, by successful wars, by the aid of 
the Church, and by cunning politics, to take from the King 
of Eno^land and from the French feudal lords so much of 
the territory they held in France that he was able to 
leave a considerable kingdom to his heir. Personally, 
however, he does not cut a very large figure in the his- 
tory of his reign. 

He b3gan badly. There was a hermit who lived in a 
cell in the woods near Paris, and who was supposed to be 
a very holy man. Whether he was holy or not, he was a 
cruel and bigoted fanatic ; for he persuaded the king that 
it would be agreeable in the eyes of the Lord to expel the 
Jews from France. A decree to that effect was issued 
and executed ; the poor Jews, w^ith their wives and chil- 
dren, were torn from their homes and driven out of the 
king's dominions. People who owed them money were re- 
leased from paying, on condition that they handed over to 
the king one fifth of what they owed. 

This inhuman edict had no sooner been carried out than 
news came that Saladin, the chief of the Saracens, had 
retaken Jerusalem, and was meting out to the Christians 
the measure they had meted to the Jews. Nothing would 
serve but another Crusade. But this was to be the greatest 
of all Crusades. Three monarchs — King Richard of Eng- 
land, King Philip of France, ^nd the Emperor of Ger- 
many^ wjipge ftanje yv2^s |^e(|be3'i'4 — l^ogli tl^e }e^d j an4 



1180-1228] 



85 



with them were dukes, counts, barons, knights, arch- 
bishops, bishops, and men-at-arms from Italy, Belgium, 
Denmark, as well as England, France, and Germany — to 
the number, it is said, of six hundred thousand, all trained 
soldiers. Most of them went in sailing craft by way of 
the Mediterranean. They stopped for a while at Sicily, 
where Richard of England — who was always quarrelling 
with some one — fell out with Philip of France, and nearly 
put an end to the expedition ; but the dispute was finally 
settled, the great fleet made a landing on the coast of 
Palestine near Acre, and proceeded to besiege the place. 



•^^-'?.* 



f .--* 



j-^ 






■'1.'"' 






"■ ' f 

1^ 







^ ^\x ^"\4>.^ 



FIGHTING THE SARACENS 



The siege was long and bloody. The Crusaders built 
towers which they ran up to the walls, and from which men- 
at-arms poured burning arrows, fire-balls made of sulphur 
and pitch, and great stones upon the garrison ; and, in 
return, the Turks kept up an incessant fire of darts and 
arrows upon the assailants. At one fight so many arrows 
l^it King Richard th^-t bjs bod^ was said to be like a pip' 



86 [1180-1223 

cushion stuck full of needles. But at last the place was 
taken, and Saladin refusing to make satisfactory arrange- 
ments about the prisoners the English had taken, their 
throats were all cut in his presence. 

This Saladin, the chief and general of the Saracens, is 
one of the few figures in the story of the Crusades whom 
you can remember with pleasure. He was a brave soldier 
who led his troopers to battle intrepidly, and when the 
battle was over he was merciful and generous to his fallen 
foes. He sent fruits and cooling drinks to the fevered 
Crusaders, and rather than have his prisoners taken to Con- 
stantinople, to be sold as slaves, he and his brother ransomed 
them with their own money and set them free. It seems 
to me that this Moslem's soul was imbued with a more 
Christian spirit than that of many of his Christian foes. 

Acre captured, Richard, w^ho could not remain quiet, 
quarrelled with his allies. King Philip, who had slept in 
the same bed with him, eaten from the same plate, and 
drunk from the same cup, accused him of having tried to 
poison him, took ship, and went home. The Duke of 
Austria had raised his banner on a corner of the wall ; 
Richard tore it down, and threw it into the ditch ; where- 
upon he broke camp and departed. Richard so grossly 
insulted the Duke of Burgundy that he also withdrew his 
forces, and left the King of England to go on with the 
Crusade. You will not be surprised to hear that this brawl- 
ing king gave up the game himself at last, tried to find 
his way home in disguise, but was betrayed by his wearing 
court gloves, and was thrown into jail by the very duke 
whose banner he had flung into the ditch. 

But though the Crusades did not place Jerusalem in 
Christian hands, they accustomed the people of that day 
to the idea of fighting for religion. You know that you 
cannot change men's religious faith by making war upon 
them; our Saviour never told his disciples to make war on 
those who differed from them — his religion was a religion 
of peace. But seven centuries ago a notion prevailed that 



1180-1223] 87 

it was right and proper to stab, and rob, and wound, and 
kill people because they held religious opinions which did 
not agree with those of the stabbers and the robbers and 
the killers. This was the reason why the Pope of Rome, 
having failed to wipe the followers of Mohammed off 
the face of the earth, began to look nearer home for a 
people which had religious opinions to which he objected. 
And he found such a people in beautiful, sunny, smiling 
Languedoc. 

They were the brightest people in France. They had 
ideas of their own and plenty of them. And one of those 
ideas was that they were quite as well able to think for 
themselves on religion as the pope was to think for them. 
They had always raged at the power which the pope held 
in France. They called themselves Albigenses and said 
they were independent of Rome. At this particular mo- 
ment their wrath was kindled by a new attempt of the 
pope to plunge the French people into misery because the 
king would not obey him. 

- Philip had married a princess of Denmark. From the 
first hour he saw her he hated her, and shortly after the 
marriage he divorced her and married a lovely girl from 
Tyrol, named Agnes of Meranie. The pope ordered him 
to put away Agnes and to take back the Dane under 
penalty of an interdict. He refused. After waiting three 
years the pope's legate or messenger summoned a council 
of bishops to meet in the cathedral at Dijon ; they dis- 
cussed the matter for a week, and on the seventh day, at 
midnight, an interdict was laid upon the kingdom. Each 
priest held a burning torch to light up the gloom of the 
church, and all chanted the prayers for the dead. Black 
crape was laid on the altar, the holy relics were laid away 
in tombs, and at a signal the torches were dashed to the 
ground, the cathedral was wrapped in gloom, and the whole 
of France was laid under a curse. For eight months there 
were no church services, no baptisms, no marriages, no 
burial services in France. Then the king yielded. 



88 [1180-1223 

But the people of Languedoc were not in a yielding 
mood. They declared that so domineering a Church was 
not for them. The Christianity which they proposed to 
ijilow must be of a gentler type. And numbers of them, 
under the lead of the gallant Raymond, Count of Tou- 
louse, began to say openly that they had no orders to take 
fi'om the pope. A messenger, whom the pope sent to re- 
buke Raymond, and who was haughty and insolent, was 
followed to the Rhone by an Albigensian and stabbed to 
death ; but Raymond's heart misgave him after this — he 
did penance and was openly scourged by the priests in 
the church. 

His people were of sterner stuff. They shut themselves 
up in the town of Beziers and prepared for battle. The 
fighting men of the Church came on in overwhelming num- 
bers under the lead of Simon of Montfort, an old Crusader 
and a bitter fighter, and the Abbot of Citeaux. The pope 
had offered every volunteer who joined the army full par- 
don for his sins, and it appeared that there were a good 
many sinners just then. The town was soon taken. When 
the soldiers asked how the}^ should distinguish rebels from 
churchmen among the citizens, the Abbot of Citeaux 
solved the difficulty very simply. " Kill them all," said 
this gentle priest ; "the Lord will know his own." 

In the great church of St. Nazaire some priest set the 
bell tolling when the soldiers broke in ; it never stopped 
tolling till there was not a living creature in the place out- 
side of the attacking army. The Abbot of Citeaux wrote 
to the pope that he had done his best, but he was afraid 
he had not killed over twenty thousand. The town was 
then fired and burned to the ground ; you can see part 
of the ruins to this day. 

Other places shared the fate of Beziers. Ten thousand 
persons were executed at Toulouse. Simon of Montfort 
and the equally savage Abbot of Citeaux rode over the 
lovely plains of Languedoc, slaying, burning, ravaging, 
and giving up pleasant towns to be sacked by their ruf- 



1180-1223] 89 

fianly camp-followers. One castle which held out for a 
while was taken, it is said, by the help of a machine of 
war invented by the Archdeacon of Paris, of all people 
in the world. When the work was done, Languedoc was 
a desert waste. Simon of Montfort continued for several 
years to hunt down scattered fugitives, until one day, when 
he was riding past the walls of Toulouse, a heavy stone 
flung from the ramparts by a woman struck him on the 
head and dashed his brains out. 

Philip had taken no very active part in the persecution 
of the Southern people. He had business of his own in 
the North. He wrested Normandy out of the hands of 
the English and fought a battle with the German em- 
peror, in w^hich the latter was badly beaten. He got Flan- 
ders too, and part of the country we call Belgium. Judged 
by the rules of that day, which measured kings by the 
extent of their dominions, no matter how the dominions 
were acquired or governed, he was a great monarch. Per- 
haps one of the most creditable works he did during his 
reign was to pave the city of Paris. 



>\\' 'i 



Chapter XV 

FRANCE SIX HUNDKED AND SEVENTY YEARS AGO 

A.D. 1223-1226 

The successor of Philip Augustus was a young man to 
whom people gave the name of Louis the Lion, though in 
his brief three years' reign he was as unlike a lion as any- 
thing you can imagine. He had a fine coronation. Long 
tables were set in the streets of Paris and laden with food 
for the poor to eat ; minstrels sang songs all day in honor 
of the lion king ; and everybody who could afford it illu- 
minated his house. Louis fought the English for a year 
or two, as the custom was ; then he turned on the people 
of Languedoc, and was going to fight them too, but a fever 
broke out in his army and carried off twenty thousand 
men, the king among the number. 

You would take less interest in the doings of this not 
very famous king than in the story of Jeanne of Flanders. 
Jeanne was the daughter of Baldwin, who in 1204 became 
Emperor of the East, when Constantinople was taken by an 
army of Venetians and Crusaders combined. He had barely 
got settled on his throne when he was obliged to march out 
to fight the Bulgarians and was taken prisoner. Word came 
to his daughter Jeanne, who was reigning in his stead in 
Flanders, that he was in prison in Bulgaria, and would his 
dear good daughter send money to ransom her father ? 

Jeanne replied that she had no money for any such pur- 
pose. 

Nearly twenty years afterward an old man, bowed, 
gray, and wrinkled, appeared before Jeanne, and said that 
he was her father, an4 th^t h^ h^d escaped from his prisou 
in Bulgaria, 



1223-1226] 01 

Jeanne replied that she did not believe him, and that he 
was an impostor. She referred to King Louis of France, 
and he too, being a very close friend to Jeanne, doubted 
the old man. The pope sent a legate to look into the case, 
and he also, after some consultation with Jeanne, declared 
that he was unable to make up his mind. While they 
were debating, Jeanne got the old man into her hands, 
imprisoned him, tortured him cruelly, and put him to death. 

The Flemish people were indignant, and accused Jeanne 
of being the murderess of her father. She answered them 
that Count Baldwin had died in his prison in Bulgaria, and 
she offered to jjrove it. She did, in effect, send a trusty 
officer of hers to that distant principality on the Danube, 
.and he returned, saying that Baldwin had really died there, 
as Jeanne had said ; that he had seen his grave, and he 
knew it was the count's, because a miraculous flame played 
round it — which ended the matter, and Jeanne reigned 
over Flanders in peace. 

Perhaps it may help you to understand this child's his- 
tory of France if you know something of the way in 
which the French lived at this time — six hundred and 
seventy years ago, about two hundred and seventy years 
before Columbus discovered America, and nearly four 
hundred years before the Puritans landed on Plymouth 
Rock. 

The country parts of France were fertile, as they are 
now, and grew wheat, barley, rye, vines, fruit, vegetables — 
but not potatoes — and hay for cattle ; in the south corn 
was raised, and on the hill-sides and in the meadows near 
by cattle were pastured — horned beasts, horses, mules, 
asses, sheep, goats, and pigs. If you had lived in those 
days you might have seen in the farm-yards the same 
poultry as we have. now, except turkeys, and the woods 
were full of deer, wild boars, and many kind of birds that 
were good eating. The streams and ponds were full of 
fish. 

There were a number of towns, but they were small. 



02 [12^3-1226 

The only fine buildings in them were the churches, monas- 
teries, convents, and abbeys ; the houses of the people 
were built of sun-dried brick or wood and thatched with 
straw ; they were set endwise to the street ; the win- 
dow-panes were small ; except in Paris the streets were 
not paved, and there were no sidewalks anywhere. A few 
old Roman roads from city to city were still in order ; but 
few of the other roads were mended, and in rainy weather 
they were full of ruts and mud. There were no public 
vehicles to carry people or goods from place to j^lace. 
Travellers went on foot or on horseback or in carts with- 
out springs ; merchants carried their wares in packs on 
the backs of mules. There were no hotels or lodging- 
houses for travellers. When people went on a journey, 
they slept and got their meals at a feudal lord's castle or 
at a monastery. The monks lodged and fed all comers ; 
the guests paid if they could ; if they had no money they 
did some work for the monastery. Rooms were warmed 
with wood burned in open hearths, or with hot embers in 
braziers which could be carried from room to room. There 
was no coal yet. 

In the castles of the feudal lords a long dining-table was 
set for twelve-o'clock dinner. The lord and the lady sat 
at the head in their best clothes, and their children, rela- 
tions, and guests lower down the table ; then came a huge 
salt-cellar, and below the salt-cellar sat the servants and 
travellers who had come in for a meal. There was no car- 
pet on the floor. Even in the king's palace floors were 
strewed with rushes, and at meals bones were picked clean 
and thrown on the floor. People ate with their knives — 
there were no table forks. Boys who were called pages 
went round from guest to guest with tall tankards of silver 
or pewter, full of wine or beer. There was no tea nor cof- 
fee nor sugar in those days ; drinks were sweetened with 
honey. 

The lord and his lady slept in a chamber of state, in a 
huge bedstead, on a mattress of wool or straw or feathers j 



1223-1226] 93 

counter|jaiies, often riclily embroidered, were their cover- 
ing ; they used no sheets. The ladies of the family had 
rooms by themselves, and one or two men-at-arms slept 
outside their doors. The servants and guests slept as often 
on the floor as elsewhere. Among the people, houses Avere 
generall}^ divided into an attic, where the whole family 
slept, and a downstairs room, where meals were cooked 
and eaten, and the man of the house carried on his business. 

All classes wore Avoollen cloth. Cotton cloth was in use 
in the Eastern Empire, and fabrics of silk were worn there 
and in Italy and Spain ; but both were very scarce and 
dear in France. The coats of the common people were 
often made of leather. No one w^ore stockings — not even 
the ladies. When the knights and feudal lords went into 
battle they thrust their bare feet into their boots and cov- 
ered their body and legs with coats of mail or iron, which 
were sometimes so heavy that when the wearer of one of 
them was knocked down he could not get up again with- 
out help. Lords and men-at-arms w-ore on their heads hel- 
mets made wholly or partly of iron. The common people 
w^ore woollen hoods called chaperons. 

Printing was not invented till over two hundred years 
after this time. There were thus no books, but in the 
monasteries and convents copies of the Bible, of the writ- 
ings of the saints, and of a few Latin and Greek authors, 
written by hand on parchment and often richly decorated, 
were carefully preserved. Hardly any one knew how to 
read and write except the priests. Some of these could 
read not only their own but foreign languages ; but the 
feudal counts and barons afltected to believe that reading 
and writing were beneath a nobleman or a man-at-arms, 
and they boasted of their ignorance. Many a feudal noble 
who could put fifty thousand men into the field could not 
write his own name, but signed leases and treaties by 
stamping a seal with the hilt of his sword. As for the 
common people, they never had a chance to learn, and it 
was not considered the thing for a lady to be reading man- 



94 [1223-1226 

uscripts. It was thought she should spend her time in 
playing the lute or working embroidery. In the South 
love song^s and romances were handed down from minstrel 
to minstrel, and were sung or spoken at feasts, and in parts 
of the North there were schools where nice questions of phi- 
losophy and theology were discussed. But there were no 
real schools in France. 

Nobody knew anything about medicine. Wounds were 
generally dressed by women, a few of whom learned some- 
thing about the effect of herbs. As for the men-doctors, 
they either gave doses of medicine which were as likely to 
kill as to cure, or burned their patients with red-hot irons, 
or they bled them, as though any good could be done by 
Weakening a man who was weak enough before. 

If you ask me if the French were a happy people at this 
time, I must say that I do not know, though they had much 
to make them otherwise. The main business of France, as 
you have perceived already, was war. Every year some 
war raged, some poor fellows were killed in other people's 
quarrels, some honest peasants' farms Avere pillaged by sol- 
diers, and some women and children were thrown out into 
the wide world to starve. Neither life nor property was 
safe, and the people of France had little or nothing to say 
about their government. 

In some towns people had clubbed together and paid 
their feudal lord a sum of money in return for his promise 
not to interfere with them ; and now and then these cities 
fought fiercely for the liberties they had thus gained. All 
the people were pious, and they took a great deal of com- 
fort out of their religion, especially when the priests were 
wise and kind, which I think was generally the case. 
Then as now, I make no doubt but, when the enemy was 
not in sight, the French were often gay and cheerful, as 
they are to-day, and I dare say they sometimes thought 
their lives were not so wretched after all. 




MINIATURE PORTRAIT OP KING LOUIS IX 



Chapter XVI 

SAINT-LOUIS 
A.D, 1226-12Y0 

The last king of France — Louis the Lion — was Louis the 
Eighth ; his successor, who was Louis the Ninth, is better 
known as Saint-Louis, because he was so good that he was 
canonized as a saint. He was indeed wise, gentle, kind, 
generous, merciful, and great-hearted. During the first 
years of his reign his mother, Blanche of Castile, ruled the 
kingdom for him, and on the whole ruled it prudently. 

Almost her first act was to put an end to the war at the 
South by adding Languedoc and the county of Toulouse 
to her son's realm. Raymond, Count of Narbonne, who 
had kept up the war and had been excommunicated in con- 
sequence, made his peace with France and the pope. Oo ^ 



96 



[1226-127.] 



day set he appeared in the cathedral of Notre Dame at 
Paris, bare from shoulders to waist. As he walked up the 
main aisle of the church the pope's legate walked behind 
him, scourging him with a whip. When he reached the 
altar and knelt in contrition, the legate cried, 

" Count of Narbonne, I absolve thee from thy excommu- 
nication." 

To which the count answered, "Amen !" 




CASTLE OF ANGERS, BUILT BY SAIISIT-LOUIS 

When Louis was twenty, he married a princess named 
Marguerite of Provence, who was only fourteen. The 
wedding-feast was one of the grandest banquets ever seen 
in France. The king wore a coat of cloth of gold and 
a scarlet mantle of the same stuff trimmed with ermine. 
His brother waited upon him and carved the meat. The 
feast was given in a cloister of the Cistercian monks ; 
the king's table was at one end of the cloister, and at the 




ISABELLA SENDS TWO RUFFL\NS TO KILL THE KING 



other were the kitchens, pantries, and offices, from which 
the meat, wine, and bread were brought. In the other 
aisles of the cloister and in the space in the middle were 
tables at which no less than three thousand knights ban- 
quetted, all in their armor and their suits of cloth of gold 
and rich stuffs. 

Everything passed off pleasantly, which was not always 
the case when the king met his subjects. When the king 



98 [1226-1270 

and queen went to Poitiers, Isabella of Angouleme visited 
them. The king sat on one side of his bed and the queen, 
with two of her ladies, on the other, and they never rose 
from their seats when Isabella entered the room or when 
she went out. Her proud spirit could not brook the affront, 
and she called on her husband to avenge her. 

At first he did not seem hungry to fight the king, but he 
said, 

" Madame, I will do all that I can." 

"If you do not," replied his wife, "you shall never enter 
my presence again." 

As he made little progress Isabella sent two of her vas- 
sals to poison the king. She gave them poison which they 
were to mix in his wine. They were caught and hanged, 
and Isabella's husband nearly lost his life and his lands. 
To please his wife he had sworn that he would never have 
his hair or his beard cut till he had humbled the king, but 
when Louis drew near with his army he sent for the bar- 
ber directly. 

Then the old dreadful subject of the Crusades came up 
again. 

Tribes of fierce Tartars came swooping down from Cen- 
tral Asia and proved far more savage than the Turks. 
The Emperor of the East had tried to pacify them by swear- 
ing friendship to one of the tribes on the body of a dead 
dog, but neither the oath nor the dead dog served him. 
He had to beg for help from King Louis, and to win his 
favor he sent him the true crown of thorns with which our 
Saviour had been crowned over twelve hundred years be- 
fore, and the king walked barefoot as far as Vincennes to 
receive it. Still Louis, who was in many things wise as 
well as good, did not accept the emperor's invitation. 

While he was pondering he fell ill — so ill that he be- 
came speechless ; and a nurse pulled a cloth over his face, 
believing that he was dead. But he suddenly recovered 
his speech and cried, 

" The cross ! the cross !" 



1226-1270] 99 

They laid the Crusader's badge on his heart ; he got well 
and called his men-at-arms to prepare for one more Crusade. 

The army assembled at a seaport on the Mediterranean, 
called Aigues Mortes. On a bright August day, when all 
had embarked on board ship, the chief caj^tain said to the 
king, 

"Sire, call up your priests, for the weather is fine, and 
we must weigh anchor." 

" Sing, in the name of God !" called the king ; and one 
after another every ship's crew took up a pious chant, and 
the whole fleet put to sea. 

Ten months afterward they cast anchor off the port of 
Damietta, in Egypt, King Louis having resolved to attack 
the Egyptians, whose sultan had conquered the Holy Land. 
King Louis was the first to leap ashore in water up to his 
waist. There was a battle fought at a place called Man- 
sourah, where both sides claimed the victory, but the 
French lost many of their best fighting-men. The Sara- 
cens threw fire - balls which stuck to the bodies of the 
French and burned fiercely; water would not put them 
out. After the battle disease broke out among the French, 
and they died by hundreds. Those who touched the dead 
bodies took the disease themselves ; thus many corpses 
were left unburied. King Louis dug trenches with his 
own hands and carried the bodies to them, but he could 
not put spirit into his followers. The French tried to re- 
treat, but the Saracens followed them, and in the end they 
were obliged to surrender. King Louis becoming a prisoner. 

While the Saracens were discussing his ransom, forty 
Mamelukes, who were the best fighters in the Saracen army, 
appeared before him, and one of them, drawing out of a 
bloody cloth the head of a freshly killed man, cried, 

"There, King, is. your enemy, the Sultan of Egypt, who 
would have killed you ! What will you give me for hav- 
ing slain him ?" 

The king turned his head away in disgust and disniissed 
the murderers, 



100 [1226-1270 

He was ransome*! after a time and spent four years in 
Palestine, caring^ for the Christians. Then, on the death of 
his mother, who had ruled France during his absence, he 
returned home. 

For fourteen years he ruled France so wisely and so well 
that I do not know where to find an equal to him in the 
whole list of French kings. He neither wronged any man 
himself nor allowed any man to be wronged by others. 
When the feudal lords oppressed their vassals, he called 
them to account, and punished them severely if they per- 
sisted in the wrong. He compelled them to have the roads 
through their fiefs guarded so that travellers should not be 
robbed in broad daylight as they had been. When the 
priests went to him and complained that people were get- 
ting not to mind being excommunicated, and that they re- 
fused to ask for absolution, which was rather an expensive 
luxury, he sent them off with the sharp reproof : " It is 
contrary to God and common-sense to compel people to 
seek absolution when the priests have done them wrong." 

ISear the church at Vincennes, which he attended, stood 
an old oak-tree with spreading branches, under which the 
king used to sit on a rug to hear the complaints of his 
people. Every one was free to tell his story. When he 
sat down he called, 

"Is there any one who has a suit?" And when some 
one rose he continued, 

" Now, silence all ! Then speak one after the other." 

His judgment was so clear that he hardly ever decided 
a case wrong. 

But news kept coming of the dreadful persecutions o£ 
the Christians in Asia. Louis felt that he could not go to 
his last rest without one more effort to stop them. Once 
more he raised the cross in the great hall of the Louvre. 
But people had learned wisdom in the last hundred years. 
Everybody was opposed to another Crusade. The pope 
was against it ; so were the bishops ; so were the priests ; 
so were the people. However, Louis was firm, and bi^ 




SAINT-LOUIS HOLDING COURT IN THE WOODS 

barons could not let him go alone. ISTor could the kings 
oi Navarre, Castile, Aragon, nor the sons of the King of 
JEngland. Poor Louis was nearly dead. He could neither 
sit on a horse nor ride in a wagon. He had to be carried 
in a litter. But his spirit was as undaunted as ever. 

The Crusaders landed near Carthage. The plague broke 
pi;t among them, and King Louis was one of the first at- 



102 [1226-12'70 

tacked. He lost his best-toved son in a skirmish in land- 
ing. He turned to his daughter Isabella and said, 

" Most dear daughter, many persons go to bed full of 
vain and sinful thoughts, and in the morning are found 
dead. The true way of loving God is to love him with our 
whole heart." 

In the night he rose in bed several times, crying, " Jeru- 
salem ! Jerusalem !" Then he bade his attendants lay him 
on a coarse sack covered with ashes. The cross was raised 
before him, and with the words, "I will enter into thy 
house, O Lord !" he peacefully expired. 

I think you will agree that if any one of whom I have 
told you is entitled to the name of saint, he is the man. 



Chapter XVII 

THE SICILIAN VESPERS 
A.D. 1270-1285 

After Saint-Louis, the next in the line of French kings 
is Philip the Third, called Philip the Bold, I suppose be- 
cause he was timid and henpecked. The most interesting 
person in his reign was his uncle — Charles of Anjou — who 
commanded the French at Carthage after the death of 
Saint-Louis. This Charles of Anjou had a thrilling history. 

Eight years before Saint Louis's death — that is to say, in 
the year 1262 — the pope offered Charles the throne of Na- 
ples and Sicily. The throne did not belong to the pope to 
give, nor was it becoming in Charles to accept it — but he 
did. The true heir to the throne was a boy of fifteen, 
named Conradine. Him Charles caught, as he appeared at 
Naples to demand his rights, and thrust into a dungeon. 
What was to be done with him ? 

" Try him for high treason," whispered the pope. 

They tried him, though the charge was so absurd that 
all the judges save one objected to find a verdict, and 
Charles's own son-in-law afterward slew that one with a 
blow of his sword; but the verdict was found, a scaffold 
was erected in the public square of Naples, and there on 
the 26th of October, 1269, young Conradine had his head 
chopped off, his last words being, "My mother, my mother, 
how thou wilt grieve over the news they will bring thee !" 

But there was a man who swore a great oath that he would 
avenge him. This man's name was John of Procida, his 
calling that of a doctor, his country Italy. He took no 
man into his counsel, but went over into Spain and asked 
the King of Aragon would he make war upon Charles of 



104 [1270-1285 

Anjou and become King of Naples and Sicily ? Don Pe- 
dro of Aragon would have liked nothing better, but Charles 
of Anjou, with France to back him, was too strong, and he 
refused. Then John of Procida sold his house and all that 
he had, and disappeared so completely that no one could 
tell what had become of him. In fact, he had put on the 
robe of a begging monk, and was wandering through the 
world in that disguise, begging his bread from place to 
place. 

He went to the Emperor of the East, and offered him 
Sicily if he would send an army against Charles. The em- 
peror was not loath, but he also was afraid. Then Procida 
went to the pope : he hated Charles and desired his ruin; 
but he died, and Charles made a trembling monk of Tours, 
whom he owned body and soul, pope in his place. Then 
John of Procida went to the feudal lords of Sicily, and 
they neither died nor were afraid; but said that whenever 
Procida gave the word they would rise against Charles 
at the head of their vassals. The Sicilians were all boiling 
with rage against the tyrant, who ground them with such 
cruel taxation that the goat-herd, and the shepherd, and the 
cow-herd, and the bee-keeper, and the fruit-grower did not 
know where to turn to get bread for their families. There 
was such a mutinous look in their eyes that Charles forbade 
the Sicilians to carry arms and ordered his officers to carry 
out the law strictly. 

In the afternoon of tho Easter Monday of the 3^ear 1282, 
through green fields and gardens bursting with flowers, 
the people of Palermo, in their best clothes, walked up the 
hill to Monreale to hear vespers. Among them was a beau- 
tiful girl of high degree, on the arm of her betrothed and 
surrounded by her family. An officer of Charles, named 
Brouet, stopped the men, examined them for concealed 
weapons, and then grossly insulted the young lady. Her 
betrothed struck the brute dead with his own sword. In- 
stantly the cry arose, "Death to the French !" and wherever 
a Frenchman was found he was slain. Procida had laid 



1270-1285] 105 

his plans so well that people had their arras in readiness, 
and ran out of their houses prepared for battle. But there 
was no resistance. The cry was " Kill !" " Kill !" and the 
sun of that Easter Monday went down in blood. The ter- 
rible massacre is known in history as the Sicilian Vespers. 

Then the King of Aragon took courage, sent a fleet 
to Sicily, and landed an army. Charles would not fight 
Mm ; he drew off his ships, and the Spanish vessels, though 
far inferior in numbers, went in chase of them. They were 
many days absent. 

At last one morning before daybreak a fleet was seen 
from the light-house at Messina. The Sicilians felt sure 
that these were the ships of Charles of Anjou, and that 
they had captured or destroyed the Spanish fleet. They 
roused Don Pedro, who mounted a horse and rode down 
to the sea-shore in the gray morning ; he found all the 
people weeping and wailing. He looked warily out to 
sea and called aloud, " Good people, be of good cheer ; 
those are our galleys which are bringing in Charles's fleet." 

Just then an armed vessel, bearing the flag of Aragon^ 
detached itself from the fleet and steered for the golden 
fountain behind which King Pedro sat on his horse, with 
his banner borne by a body of cavalry. When the vessel 
touched shore the captain landed and said to the king, 

" Lord, behold your galleys ; they bring you those of 
your enemies," 

At these words the king dismounted and fell on his 
knees. Soldiers and people followed his example, and all 
sang a hymn of praise to God. The Sicilians knew that 
they had regained their liberties, and never did any one 
see such joy as theirs. 

Charles of Anjou was crazed by his defeat. He offered 
to settle the dispute with Don Pedro by a duel, and actu- 
ally went to Bordeaux to meet him, but the King of Ara- 
gon was not foolish enough to indulge in such silly busi- 
ness ; he rode into Bordeaux and rode out again so swiftly 
tliat be was gone before Charles knew that he had arrived, 



106 [1270-1286 

Then Charles sent a fleet under a lame son of his to defy 
the Aragonese fleet in the Bay of Naples. The lame 
prince had forty-five galleys, the Spanish captain only 
thirty-five ; but the Spaniards accepted battle and de- 
feated the French fleet, taking the lame prince prisoner. 
When the news of his son's capture was brought to his 
father, he cried, 

" Why is he not dead ?" 

Death soon overtook, not his lame son, but himself. 
His friend the pope took up his cause and gave the king- 
dom of Aragon — which did not belong to him — to a 
French prince, the son of Philip the Bold. But he could 
not deliver the kingdom — he could only cause more long 
and fruitless wars which left things as they were. 

Philip the Bold was ruled by his wife, Mary of Brabant, 
who was beautiful and cunning. Before her marriage 
Philip had been ruled by a barber-surgeon whose name 
was Brosse. Brosse, jealous of the new queen, accused 
her of all manner of crimes ; she denied everything and 
accused the barber-surgeon of crimes fully as black. King 
Philip referred the case to a fortune-teller, who decided 
that the queen was innocent and Brosse guilty. Where- 
upon the barber-surgeon was hanged, and the queen went 
on ruling her husband until he died of a fever on an expe» 
dition to capture Aragon for his son. 



Chapter XVIII 

PHILIP THE HANDSOME 
A.D. 1285-1314 

The successor of Philip the Bold was his son Philip the 
Fourth, who was nicknamed Philip the Handsome. His 
reign was exciting. 

He made in the laws a great number of changes which 
were on the whole improvements. He would not allow 
any one but himself to rob the Jews. He would not allow 
priests to try cases in court, or to sit in Parliament, or to 
hold civil office. He stopped legacies of property to the 
Church. He provided that persons could buy and own 
land without being feudal lords. He founded colleges. 
He stopped the absurd fashion of trial by battle. He es- 
tablished custom-houses and laid duties on foreign goods 
imported into France. With these sensible changes, he 
made others which were not so sensible. He coined 
money of less than the lawful weight and made it a crime 
to weigh his coins. He fixed by law the clothing which 
people should wear and the food which they should eat. 
They could not have more than one soup and two meat 
dishes at dinner at half-past eleven, and not more than one 
kind of meat should be served in each dish. If he had 
done nothing worse than meddle with people's dinners, 
you would have thought better of him than I am afraid 
you can. But he was the greediest thief in France, 

He had the usual war with England ; it broke out this 
time from a fight between English and Norman sailors, in 
which the Normans hung an English sea-captain to his 
own yard-arm with a dead dog tied to his feet. A more 
serious war was with Flanders, which Philip seized and 



log [1285-1S14 

annexed to France on the pretence that the Flemish lords 
had been untrue to him — in reality because Flanders waa 
rich, and he was always in need of money. He sent a 
body of troops into the countr^^, under trusty officers, and 
bade them bleed the Flemings till their fat bodies ran with 
coin. They were not men to stand that kind of bleeding. 

On the 21st of March, 1302, after night had fallen, every 
iron caldron in Bruges was brought out into the street, and 
people began to beat them with iron hammers. Every- 
body knew what this meant. A little one-eyed fellow 
named King, who was the leader of the workmen, had set- 
tled upon the signal. Instantly a butcher, meeting a 
Frenchman, struck him dead with his cleaver. The whole 
city burst forth in the black night, and wherever a French- 
man was met he was killed, the women taking great de- 
light in throwing the fugitives out of windows. The 
bloody work went on next day and the day after, and 
what was done at Bruges was also done at Ypres, Grave- 
lines, and other towns. So the French were wiped off the 
face of Flanders, as they had been wiped off the face of 
Sicily. 

Up came French armies to avenge their countrymen, 
and opposite them in bold array stood the Flemings, drawn 
up behind a deep ditch, each man with a pike shod with 
iron stuck in the ground before him. The French could 
not see the ditch, and when they charged, with a furious 
rush, they rolled into it one on top of the other, the 
knights lying helpless in their heavy armor ; the F'lemings 
beat their brains out with iron or leaden mauls, and in a 
very little while the battle was over, and the remains of 
the French army marched back home. 

But this was nothing to the war between PhilijD and 
the pope. The latter was a fighting priest, by name 
Boniface ; he invited the whole world to visit Rome on 
the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the Church, 
in the year of our Lord 1300, and to those who came with 
full pockets and open hands he promised remission of their 




THE TEMPLE 



sins. They came in such crowds that they slept in tents 
or under awnings in the streets, and they laid so much 
money on the altars that priests raked it up with rakes 
without counting it. Now there was one thing which 
Philip loved above everything else — that was money. 

It enraged him to see archbishops and bishops, canons 
and monks, all round and sleek, rolling in wealth and 
feeding on the fat of the earth. He established a new 
tax, the maltote, which required citizens to pay one fif- 
tieth of their substance to the king, and he ordered that 



110 [1285-1314 

priests should pay like other people. The pope retorted 
with a bull, excommunicating priests who paid money to 
the king without the permission of the Church. Philip 
struck back by forbidding the export of gold or silver, 
which cut oif the pope's supply of Peter's pence from 
France. The pope sent a legate into Languedoc to stir up 
the people against the king ; the king caught the legate 
and condemned him to death. The pope issued a bull 
against the king, warning him against the danger of rebel- 
ling against his spiritual superior ; the bull was burned in 
a public square in Paris, in the presence of nobles, sol- 
diers, ar^ people. The pope summoned the French clergy 
to meet him at Rome ; the king forbade them to leave 
France. 

I suppose the quarrel had become so bitter that it could 
not go on without an outbreak. So thought Novaret, a 
Gascon, and Sciarra Colonna, an Italian, both friends of 
Philip's and with Philip's money in their pockets. They 
started for Anagni, where the pope was staying, and tore 
into the town at the head of a body of cavalry. A few 
cardinals, who were in attendance on the pope, jumped 
out of a window and hid in country - houses. Sciarra 
Colonna broke open the doors of the house where the pope 
was, troopers dashed through the windows, and they burst 
into the pope's room. He was seated on his throne, with 
his pope's robe on, the papal tiara on his head, a crucifix 
in one hand and his keys in the other. He was silent for 
a moment ; then he spoke, 

" Here is my head ! Here is my throat !" 

Sciarra Colonna struck the old man— he was eighty-six — 
on his cheek with his mailed hand. 

For three days they kept him prisoner, the Gascon 
Novaret not daring to kill him. Then the people of 
Anagni rose and rescued him, driving Philip's friends out 
of the place. 

They bore him into the public square, crying like a 
child. " Good people," he stammered, " I thank you. I 



1285-1814] 111 

have had nothing to eat or drink for three days ; if there 
be any good woman who will bestow on me a little bread 
and wine, or water if she have no wine, I will give her 
God's blessing and mine. Whoever will bring me the least 
thing to relieve my wants, I will give him absolution for 
all his sins." 

They took him to Rome, where his mind gave way un- 
der the shock he had endured, and he died without having 
received the sacrament — as if to confirm the prophecy of a 
bitter enemy, who had said long before that, as " he had 
climbed like a fox, and reigned like a lion, he would die 
like a dog." 

From the first to the last King Philip had but one 
thought — money. He had taken from the Church in 
France all the money he could find, and now he turned on 
the Knights Templar, who were known to be immensely 
rich. They were a body of fighting monks, who had at 
first banded themselves together to fight on the side of the 
Crusaders. When the Crusades were over they became 
soldiers of fortune, who fought for any one who would pay 
them, and, as they were brave and skilful, their services 
were in great request. They lived without women, at- 
tended no church but their own, wore armor at all times, 
and looked fierce enough with their cropped hair and their 
dark, frowning, weather-beaten faces. They had gradually 
acquired a vast quantity of property. It is said that they 
owned ten thousand estates, besides castles and strong 
places ; but their principal home was in that part of Paris 
which was called, after them, the Temple, and which has 
given its name to one of the finest boulevards in the gay 
city. When they had built their house in this quarter 
they moved their treasure into it ; it consisted of a hun- 
dred and fifty thousand florins of gold and ten mule-loads 
of silver. Philip declared that he would have that money. 

He instigated all sorts of improbable and indeed absurd 
charges against the knights, and on them he had the 
Grand Master, Jacques Molay, and a hundred and forty 



112 [1285-1314 

knights arrested at Paris. Other arrests follbwed all over 
the kingdom. The attack on the knights was so unreason- 
able that the pope protested, whereupon Philip extorted 
from a hundred knights by the most frightful tortures — in 
which both fire and steel were used — confessions of hide- 
ous crimes. And in the meantime, to prevent interference, 
he made the pope himself a prisoner at Avignon in France. 

Then followed a trial which lasted four years. In the 
intervals of the sittings of the court, torture was constantly 
applied to the prisoners to make them confess. Of those 
who did — and you may fancy how they were driven to 
confess when I tell you that the feet of one knight were 
held before a fire until the bones of his heel cracked off, 
while a third was three times stretched on the rack and 
was then kept for thirty-six weeks in a noisome pit on 
bread and water — fifty-four recanted their confessions 
when they were well enough to speak. 

They were forthwith taken out and burned to death. 

The Grand Master, Jacques Molay, made a sort of half 
confession, which in reality was only a submission to the 
Church. He was taken back to his dungeon ; whether he 
had been or was tortured I do not know. But his man- 
hood came back to him. He stood up bravely before his 
judges and declared that neither he nor his order had done 
anything that was contrary to religion or to the Church 
■ — that he had nothing to confess. 

They took him back to his dungeon and sentenced him 
and three other knights, who had also recanted, to be 
burned alive. Two of the three recanted their recanta- 
tion and were kept in prison for life. In the gray twi- 
light of a March evening, in the year 1314, Molay and the 
other were ferried to an island in the Seine, on which two 
stakes had been set. When the knights were chained to 
the stakes a quantity of green branches and wet firewood 
was piled around their legs and feet, and it was set on fire. 
The damp logs and twigs burned slowly ; the flames curled 
T9WX\^ the knights' bodies, inflicting excruciating agony 



1285-1314] 113 

without causing death. For an hour the voices of the 
dying men were heard through the thick smoke, protest- 
ing that their order was innocent of crime. Then a silence 
fell, and the wood began to burn up briskly. 

On a log near by sat the King of France, listening to the 
crackling of the flames with no more expression on his face 
than you could have seen on the bark of the log on which 
he sat. 



Chapter XIX 

SORCERY AND DELUSION 
A.D. 1314-1328 

During the fourteen years which followed the death 
of Philip the Handsome — who was killed by a fall from 
his horse — three sons of his reigned in France : Louis the 
Tenth, who reigned two years ; Philip the Fifth, who 
reigned six ; and Charles the Fourth, who reigned six. 

The events of their reigns were so unimportant that you 
would hardly care to hear of them. They were of no con- 
sequence while they lived, and their memory was of no 
interest when they were dead. All three met with sudden 
deaths. Louis the Tenth died from drinking mulled wine 
after a game at tennis ; and Philip and Charles perished 
of diseases which no one could explain, but which carried 
them off very rapidly. You will not be surprised to hear 
that it was suspected they were poisoned. There were a 
good many people who had grudges against the posterity 
of Philip the Handsome. 

It will interest you more to hear something of the strange 
delusions which pervaded the world, and France especially, 
during tlieir time. People all seemed to have gone mad 
on some crotchet or other. In every country of the world, 
at all times, ignorant people have believed things which 
were contrary to reason ; the propensity is liable to break 
out with virulence at odd intervals, and the fourteenth 
century saw one of the outbreaks. In that century people 
went positively crazy on the subjects of witchcraft, sorcery, 
religious enthusiasm, and race prejudice. This was in 
large part due to the misery of the common people. When 
Philip the Handsome robbed the feudal lords, the lords 



1314-1328] 115 

turned round and robbed their vassals ; and these last, in 
their dreadful misery, lost their heads altogether. 

Many thousands of them met in the fields near Paris 
and said they were going to the Holy Land, where they 
would find rest. They had no money ; they had to steal 
food when they could not beg it ; one town passed them on 
to another to get rid of them until they reached Toulouse. 
There troops were called out, and the miserable vagabonds 
were hanged in batches of twenty till they scattered. 

The Jews were always being driven out of France and 
were always coming back, as if they enjoyed being robbed. 
The peasants now accused them of having plotted with lep- 
ers — that is, persons afi3.icted with the horrible disease of 
leprosy — to poison the wells. A miserable leper confessed 
that he had got money from a Jew for throwing into a well 
a package containing an adder's head, the legs of a frog, 
and a woman's hair, the whole mixed with human blood ; 
and, the pretext serving, Jews and lepers were murdered 
whenever they were found. At Chinon a big pit was dug 
and the bottom covered with burning firewood. Into this 
pit a hundred and fifty Jews — men, women, and children 
— were compelled to leap at the end of a pitchfork. 

Forty Jews agreed to die together at the top of a high 
house, and chose of their number an old and a young man 
to kill the other thirty-eight. When the work was done, 
and only the two remained, they drew lots which should 
kill the other ; the young man drew the long straw, and he 
stabbed the old man, promising to meet him presently in 
the next world. But when he found himself alone he 
changed his mind* and resolved to live. He stripped the 
thirty-nine corpses of purses, money, and jewels, and let 
himself down by a rope ; but the rope was too short, he 
fell, was taken, and burned. 

When you remember that there was no drainage any- 
where in France, that heaps of rotting garbage seethed in 
the Southern sun, and that the common people were al- 
ways ill-fed when they were fed at all, you will not be 



116 [1314-1328 

surprised to hear that disease never stayed its hand. There 
was an awful plague in this fourteenth century, which was 
called the Black Death. I suppose it was a malignant 
fever with blood-poisoning. It was always breaking out, 
destroying thousands of lives ; then subsiding for a while ; 
then breaking out again. After one terrible outbreak, in 
which some of the best people of the day were carried 
off, a lot of cranks declared that the wrath of God must 
be appeased by penance. They formed themselves into 
processions — men, women, and children — and marched 
through Europe in long files, whipping each other on the 
bare back. They were called Flagellants or Whippers ; 
and it is said — I do not know how true it may be — that 
there were at one time nine hundred thousand of them, 
all lashing each others' raw backs till the blood poured 
down. 

Everybody at that time believed in sorcery. Generally 
speaking, all science which ignorant people could not un- 
derstand was called sorcery ; thus you heard that in Charle- 
magne's time a bishop was supposed to practise sorcery be- 
cause he had made a clock, and in this fourteenth century 
a monk was accused of sorcery because he had a bottle of 
phosphorus which shone in the dark. A great many peo- 
ple were supposed to be sorcerers, and to have the power 
of inflicting disease, or of paralyzing the tongue or the 
limbs of an enemy, or of causing death by means of en- 
chantments. There were many ways in which these 
things could be done. A very superior kind of sorcerer 
could do a man to death with a few words whispered, in a 
foreign tongue, over the bed in which he was to lie. But 
legitimate sorcery was done with wax figures. 

If you had lived in those days, and had been as bad as I 
hope you are good, and had wanted to put your enemy out 
of the way, you would have made a little wax image of 
him a few inches high. Into this you would have stuck 
needles. If your sorcery was the genuine article, each 
needle gave the real man exquisite pain, and eventually 




HANGING A SORCERER IN THE MIDDLE AGES 



laid him up in bed. Then you went on sticking more 
needles into the wax figure, and the man went on getting 
worse ; until at last, when you were tired of playing with 
him, you set your figure before a hot fire, the wax melted, 
and the man died. This may strike you as something like 
what you have read in fairy tales. But in those ignorant 



118 [1314-1328 

old times lots of people lost their lives on charges of hav- 
ing caused death by the use of Avax fignres. 

Jeanne, the wife of Philip the Handsome, bore a grudge 
against Gruilhard, Bishop of Troyes, in Champagne. The 
bishop went to a sorceress and gave her money to soothe 
the queen's temper. The sorceress failing to make the 
queen better disposed to the bishop, the latter went to a 
sorcerer and got from him a little waxen image of the 
queen, christened it in regular style, with godfather and 
godmothers, and stuck it full of needles. The queen re- 
maining in good health, the sorcerer got frightened and 
confessed. Gruilhard was arrested, and it would have 
gone hard with him if, just then, Jeanne had not died. 
As it w^as, he spent the rest of his life in prison. 

Marigny, the counsellor of Philip the Handsome, did not 
fare so well. It was charged against him that his wife 
had made a wax statue of Philip, and had set it before a 
fire just before the king's death. People were found to 
swear to the fact, and Marigny ^^^as hanged and his wife 
imprisoned for life. 

Under the reign of Philip the Fifth, laws were made 
providing severe punishments for workmen who shut up 
evil spirits in looking-glasses, bracelets, and rings ; and the 
king himself wore a ring which belonged to Margaret of 
Foix, in which a good spirit was said to live. So long as 
he wore that ring the king felt he was safe. But it did 
not prevent his dying at the age of thirty. 



Chapter XX 

FRANCE HUMBLED 

A.D. 1328-1350 

After the death of Charles the Fourth, in 1328, the 
crown of France fell to a cousin of his, Philip of Valois, 
who became Philip the Sixth. His history is a story of 
defeat in war and of social triumphs at the royal court. 

It seemed that the English and French never could 
agree. The King of England, Edward the Third, had 
some claim to the throne of France, and his pretension 
was supported by a French noble who had been exiled 
from France. He did not at first put forth his claims, but 
finding a war raging — it raged off and on for a century or 
nacre— between the French and the people of Flanders, he 
sent the Flemings a fleet of war-ships to help them. Philip 
also fitted out war-ships, and the two fleets met off Helvet- 
sluys, at the mouth of the Scheldt. Most of Philip's ships 
were hired from the Genoese, who were famous sailors in 
those days. But the Genoese sailor who commanded on 
this occasion did not know his business. He kept his 
ships moored close together in the port, and the English 
ships, sailing down upon them with a free wind, captured 
the Christopher, which was the flag-ship, and sank so many 
other vessels that the Genoese hoisted the white flag, after 
losing thirty thousand men. 

The Flemish leader at this time was Jacob Van Arte- 
velde, a brewer from Ghent, and a man of courage and 
common-sense. So long as he ruled Flanders it prospered, 
but one day the people grew tired of him and accused him 
of having stolen the public money. 

'* Gentlemen," said Artevelde, standing at an open win- 



120 [1828-1350 

dow, while the mob stood below, "I have not taken a far- 
thing." 

But the mob roared that they did not believe him, and 
that he must come down to them. 

He, knowing what that meant, fled to a church for 
refuge, but was caught on the steps and struck dead by a 
blow from a weaver's knife. 

The war was transferred to the other side of the country, 
namely to Brittany. Here Charles of Blois claimed to be 
duke, and on his side was Philip of France; John of Mont- 
ford also claimed to be duke, and on his side was Edward of 
England. Charles, who was such a saint that he walked 
barefoot through the snoAV to hear mass, put pebbles in his 
shoes, and wore a tightly knotted cord round his bare waist, 
caught John at Nantes and sent him prisoner to Paris. 
John's wife Jeanne, who was at Rennes, summoned her 
fighting -men together, showed them her little son, and 
made them swear to stand by this dear little hoy to the 
bitter end. She shut herself up in a fort, which Charles 
besieged. At the head of her Bretons she sallied forth 
and drove him back time and again, but still he kept a 
close siege. Jeanne's provisions became low, her fighting- 
men grew discouraged, but her own intrepid soul never 
quailed. She told her soldiers that, sooner or later, the 
English would come to her relief. And sure enough, just 
as despair was settling on the garrison, the lookout on the 
topmost tower saw the banner of Walter Manny waving in 
the distant sunlight and creeping and creeping nearer and 
nearer over the plain, until he and his knights rode up 
furiously and cut their way through the besiegers' lines 
into the castle. Beautiful and brave Jeanne of Montford 
came down to meet them, leading her little son by the 
hand, and kissed every man of them. 

Both the King of England and the King of France must 
then have felt that it was time to fight it out between 
them. The two armies met at a place called Creci, in 
Picardy. The English king had about thirty-two thou- 




ASSAULT ON A WALLED TOWN 

sand men, of whom eighteen thousand were Welsh and 
Irish — barefoot, ignorant, half savage, and armed with pike 
and knife. He had no cavalry, but he had a body of Eng- 
lish archers, and, what was far better, a body of gunners 
with cannon — which for the first time in history were 
then used in battle. Th^ French had more men, but of 



122 [1328-1350 

these many were hired Genoese archers, who, on the excuse 
that their bowstrings were wet, took but little part in the 
battle, and ran away as soon as they could. Among the 
rest were the flower of the chivalry of France — princes, 
dukes, counts, barons, and knights — with their men-at- 
arms, all heavily encumbered with steel armor. The 
French had plenty of cavalry, but no artillery. 

Under the shower of English arrows, which fell like 
snow, the French nobles went down, horses and men to- 
gether ; where they fell they lay, and the Welsh and 
Irish despatched them with their knives. Wherever they 
were thickest, cannon-balls rolled in, felling a score of 
men-at-arms at a shot. The feudal lords fought splendid- 
ly. They charged again and again into the English in- 
fantry, plying their battle-axes ; but whenever they were 
thrown, that was the end of them. They could not get up. 

The old blind king of Bohemia, hearing shouts which to 
his trained ear seemed to mean defeat, called to two of his 
knights, 

" Gentlemen, as I am blind, I must request you to lead 
me so far into the battle that I may this day strike one 
stroke with my sword." 

They tied the reins of his horse to theirs, and together 
rode furiously into the English ranks. Next day all three 
were found dead side by side. 

The battle was lost. Philip, with a few faithful knights, 
rode from the field and did not draw rein till he reached 
the gate of Amiens. When the warder answered his 
knock, 

*' Who seeks entrance at this hour ?" 

" It is," said Philip, " the fortunes of France." 

Edward moved swiftly to Calais and laid siege to the 
place. He built a wooden town round it, with streets and 
a market-place. Very soon hunger began to be felt in the 
town. Four hundred infirm old men, women, and children 
were turned out because there was no food to give them. 
Edward let them die between his lines and the walls. The 




CHARGE OF THE FRENCH KNIGHTS 



garrison ate dogs, cats, and rats ; they chewed leather 
boots ; they made soup of weeds and the scrapings of old 
barrels in which meat and flour had been stored ; they 
grew so thin that many could hardly stand ; but not till the 
last ration had been eaten did they consent to surrender. 



124 [1328-1350 

Then Eustache de Saint-Pierre, with five others, bare- 
headed, barefooted, and with ropes around their necks, bore 
to the king the keys of Calais. Edward ordered them to 
immediate execution, as the custom of that day was ; but 
his queen, Philippa, and his bravest knights begged him on 
their knees to spare the old men, and after a time he yield- 
ed. But many a long year passed before Calais again be- 
came a French town. 

You might fancy that a king who had endured so crush- 
ing a defeat as Creci, and who had lost Calais to France, 
would have spent his last years in sorrow and despair. But 
from his coronation to his death, in victory or defeat, Philip 
was always gay. splendid, magnificent, a reveller in polished 
and joyous society. He set the fashion of building gor- 
geous palaces in Paris, and made it then — what it is now — 
the finest city in Europe. After a terrible epidemic of the 
Black Death, when every family was in mourning, and he 
was fifty-eight years of age, he invited all the fashion of 
France to witness his marriage to a beautiful girl of eigh- 
teen, who had come to Paris to become the wife of his son. 

His favorite home was at Vincennes, where in the middle 
of a glorious forest of oaks he had built a castle with tow- 
ers and donjon, and drawbridges and lakes, and shrubber- 
ies and shady bridle paths, and leafy lanes for lovers. Here 
he feasted the feudal nobles, with their daughters and fair 
ladies, and gave deer-hunts and tournaments, at which the 
most lovely women in France figured in turn as Queen of 
Beauty. He insisted that every one should be splendidly 
dressed. The men wore piebald suits of silk, fitting closely 
to their figures, and with enormous sleeves ; the hair was 
done up in a queue, and beards were trimmed fan-shape ; 
the points of men's boots were fastened to their belts with 
thongs, and the heel ended in a sort of claw. On the heads 
of the ladies were tall hats, not unlike the mitres which 
bishops wore, and from these long ribbons dangled and 
floated in the wind. On each side of the hat the hair was 
dressed into the shape of a horn, and below the horn it was 



1328-1350] 125 

the fashion to wear false ears of prodigious size. Alto- 
gether, the ladies' heads must have looked like heads of 
cows. Their skirts were plaited and quilted and were often 
covered with rich embroideries. By this time stockings 
had come in ; they were of silk and clocked. Every lady 
wore a belt, to which a bag for money or keys was at- 
tached, and in the belt was stuck a dagger. Reading had 
become almost common among the ladies j they were fond 
of Italian romances. 



Chapter XXI 

ROBBERS REIGN 
A.D. 1350-1364 

John, the son of Philip the Sixth, found the treasury 
empty when he came to the throne, and proceeded to try 
to fill it by imposing a tax which was called the gabelle. 
This tax Charles of Navarre refused to pay on his lands 
in France ; he said that no gatherer of that tax should 
ever leave his fief alive. 

King John took horse and rode thirty hours without 
stopping, from Orleans to Rouen, where Charles of Na- 
varre was feasting with John's son, who, being heir to the 
throne, was called the dauphin. On arrival the king strode 
into the banquet-hall, preceded by a squire who cried, 

" Let no man stir, under pain of death !" 

Then, seizing the King of Navarre by the throat, King 
John exclaimed, 

" Traitor ! thou art not worthy to sit at my son's table. 
I will neither eat nor drink while thou livest." 

The dauphin threw himself at his father's feet and be- 
sought him to remember that Charles was his guest. But 
the angry king bade his men bind the guest and three 
other guests ; the first was thrown into a dungeon, the 
other three were beheaded on the spot. It was a bad be- 
ginning for a miserable reign. 

A large part of France, as you know, was held by the 
English. A party of English troops, under Edward the 
Black Prince, were at Bordeaux. He had four thousand 
English archers and four thousand Gascons, half of whom 
were mere robbers who fought for the plunder they could 
get. The King of France, with fifty thousand men, includ- 




ARREST OF CHARLES OF NAVARRE AT ROUEN 

ing twenty-six dukes and a hundred and forty knights, 
marched out to fight him near a place called Poitiers. But 
as at Creci, the French were badly handled. They were 
brave enough, but they could not resist the shock of the 
English, who charged down a hill, threw the front ranks 
into confusion, and backed them upon the rear ranks ; so the 
larger army lost the day. King John himself fought cour- 
ageously. His youngest son was by his side, calling to 
him, 



128 /J 1350-1364] 

"Father! guard your right! Father! guard your 
left !" 

Then, in the turmoil of battle, the king was surrounded, 
and a knight, cleaving his way through the press by sheer 
strength and thrusting aside the weapons with his hand, 
demanded his surrender. He became a prisoner in Eng- 
land, and never again, except on one short visit, did he 
tread the soil of France. 

Then followed eight years of the most dreadful confusion 
you ever read of. The king's son, the dauphin, a poor, pale, 
consumptive boy of nineteen, was unable to keep order or 
exert authority. There was a meeting of the States-Gen- ' 
eral, which was an apology for a congress, but it could say 
nothing except that France had been shamefully robbed 
and was greatly to be pitied. The English released their 
prisoners on condition that they should pay ransom, and 
the barons and knights squeezed their vassals so cruelly 
to raise it that the poor peasants starved. What the 
barons and knights left them, disbanded soldiers took. 
The latter became highway robbers and lived b}^ plunder. 
All over France the roads were infested by parties of rob- 
bers, who made booty of everything they found. 

They took from the farmer his lean cattle, his tumble- 
down cart, his poor tools, his broken plough, and his worn 
harness. If they thought he had money saved they held 
his feet to a fire to make him confess where it was hid. 
Those who did these things were not common robbers — 
they were quite often barons who had fought in the wars, 
and had taken to robbery after the fighting ceased. Many 
of them were rich. One of their ways of operating was 
thus : When they observed a town or a village which 
seemed to be worth robbing, they would gather their band 
of forty or fifty and march upon it in the night, avoiding 
the high road, and getting into the place about daybreak. 
Then they would set fire to a house, and when the people 
sprang half awake out of their beds, they would kill the 
men and fill the air with unearthly cries, so that it seemed 



1350-1364] .^ 129 

there was an army in the place. Then the towns-people 
would run away, and the robbers would gather in the 
booty. 

In many parts of France the peasants did not dare to 
stay in their houses, but lived in holes in the ground which 
were connected by underground passages. Sometimes 
women and children stayed in these holes for weeks to- 
gether, while the men crept out from time to time to see 
if the robbers had gone away. Of course the fields were 
not seeded, and this meant famine. 

When the famine pressed too cruelly, the peasantry rose 
against the barons and became robbers in their turn. They 
armed themselves with scythes, and pitchforks, and clubs, 
and knives, and such poor weapons as they could get, and 
fell upon the feudal lords and killed them, sparing none. 
This is called in history the Jacquerie. 

Thus there were at this time in France four or five kinds 
of bandits, who were all trying to live on the country by 
murder and robbery : the regular robbers, who were dis- 
banded soldiers ; the followers of the Dauphin ; the follow- 
ers of Charles of Navarre ; the peasants ; and here and there 
soldiers of fortune — English, German, and French — who 
were seeking plunder. These parties all robbed each other, 
and fought with each other, and robbed peaceable people, 
and burned houses, and tore up vines wherever they went. 

But the city of Paris stood like a rock in the stormy sea. 
Every man had taken up arms ; they had chosen as their 
leader Stephen Marcel, the provost of the merchants. He 
raised great barricades against attack and manned them 
with men that could fight. Through the gates long strings 
of peasants, who had lost everything, and trembling monks 
and nuns, who had been driven from their houses, came 
streaming into the city for shelter. Paris took them all in. 
Marcel called a meeting of delegates from other cities, and, 
largely through the counsels of the wise Archbishop of 
Laon, they framed a plan of defence and government, 
which they required the dauphin to sign. He agreed to it; 
9 



130 [1350-1364 

broke his agreement ; agreed again ; and again refused to 
agree. The people grew sick of him, and when Charles of 
Navarre appeared in the streets they cheered him. On 
one troubled night they would have taken the dauphin's 
life, if Marcel had not thrust on his head a red and blue 
hood such as the city soldiers wore. 

Then, after a little while, the people of Paris changed 
their minds and would have none of Charles of Navarre. 
Marcel still believed in him and went out to meet him one 
night to give him the key of one of the city gates. To 
him out of the dark night came the voice of John Mail- 
lart, crying, 

" Stephen, what do you here at this time of night ?" 

"I am here," said Stephen with a voice which shook, 
"to guard the city over which I am set." 

" You lie !" cried John. " You are here to betray us." 
And he struck him dead with a blow of his axe. 

After a time the English let King John go, on his prom- 
ise that he would pay a ransom of three million crowns. 
But he could not raise the money, and, like a man of honor 
as he was, he returned to his prison in London — it was 
a very comfortable prison — where he lived sumptuously. 
There he died and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. At 
his funeral four thousand torches, each twelve feet high, 
and as many tapers lighted the corpse to the grave. It 
was the least the English could do after keeping him pris- 
oner for so many years. 



Chapter XXII 

BERTH AND DUGUESCLIN 

A.D. 1364-1380 

The next king is called in history Charles the Wise * his 
proper title is Charles the Fifth. One of his arms was 
crippled, and he was weak, so that he could neither hold 
a lance nor sit a horse. It had been said of him that 
he could not live long, as he had been poisoned in his 
youth, and the French grumbled when he came to the 
throne. But you may perhaps think, when you hear his 
story, that he may have served France better than a fight- 
ing king would have done. 

He kept much at home ; used to sit in his study in his 
palace and think all the time. He rose early, listened to 
all who called, walked in his gardens, and meditated and 
planned, while his band played music and his courtiers 
chatted. He had enough to think about. His kingdom 
was overrun by three pests, each of which seemed worse 
than the others ; these were the followers of the King- of 
Navarre, the English, and the soldier-bandits. He saw 
that, before anything could be done, these three must be 
conquered ; and he looked about for a man who could 
conquer them. The man for the job he found in Bertrand 
Duguesclin. 

This was a soldier from the northwest corner of France, 
which was called Brittany. He was nearly fifty years old, 
with a short figure^ flat nose, green eyes, broad shoulders, 
and long arms. He was a fighter born. When he w^as 
only a common man-at-arms, a sorceress named Tiphaine 
had foretold that he would become a valiant knight, where- 
upon he married her by way of reward for her bright 




CHURCH AT ST. DENYS 

augury. King Charles sent for him, and asked him if he 
could rid the kingdom of the Navarrese. 

" I'll try," said Duguesclin, and he marched forth at the 
head of his Bretons and inflicted on the Navarrese such a 
terrible beating that they gave no more trouble in that 



Then said the king, " Suppose you try to rid me of the 
English next." 

This was not so easy. The English had a large array 
and an able soldier — Sir John Chandos — at its head. Du- 
guesclin gave him battle, but was defeated and made pris- 
oner. After a time he was ransomed, set at the head of 
another army, and went at it again. This time he gath- 
ered into his army most of the soldier-bandits of whom 
King Charles was as anxious to get rid of as the English ; 
thus, like a wise general, intending to use one set of ene- 
mies to destroy the other. But again fortune was against 
him — he was beaten and taken prisoner. 

This time the English had learned to fear him so much 
that they did not want to let him go for any ransom. He 



1364-1380] 133 

taunted them, saying that they must be terribly afraid of 
him if they dared not set him free for money, as the cus- 
tom of that day was. This wounded their pride, and they 
grudgingly agreed to accept a ransom ; then, piqued in 
their honor. Sir John Chandos and the Black Prince offered 
to lend him half the money. He thanked them, but raised 
it elsewhere, and once more got the command of an army. 
Now luck turned. Sir John Chandos died, and soon after- 
ward the Black Prince, who had disgraced himself by 
sacking the town of Limoges, and putting every man, 
woman, and child in it to death, went home and died also. 
There was no one left in the English army who could hold 
his own against Duguesclin, and he pushed the English 
back to the sea, regaining all the rich country between 
the Loire and the Gironde, which the English had held, 
and much more territory besides. 

Many of the soldier-bandits had been killed in his bat- 
tles with the English. Others Duguesclin persuaded to 
go into Spain under the pretence of joining a crusade 
against the Moors. Thus he nearly cleared France of the 
most abominable vermin that had ever infested the coun- 
try, and for the first time in many years the poor peasants 
could till their farms in peace. 

This was the work of Duguesclin. The king made him 
Constable of France and loaded him with riches. But he 
did not live to enjoy them. He was taken ill on a march 
and died at the age of sixty-six. When he felt death near, 
he raised himself on his couch and kissed his sword, say- 
ing to his nearest friend, 

" To you I commit it. I have never betrayed the king's 
trust." 

And, turning to the soldiers round him, he added, 

" Forget not, whenever you may be fighting, that priests, 
women, and children are not your enemies." 

They buried him at St. Denys, by the side of the kings 
of France. 

Two months afterward his friend the king followed 



134 



[1364-1380 



him to the grave. By wise management he had not only 
made France peaceful, but had got together large sums of 
money, which he spent m building grand palaces, with 
fine libraries and splendid galleries. He was generous to 
the poor and lived in his palace as became a king. His 
sideboard was loaded with gold plate. He had married a 
good woman, Jeanne of Bourbon, who set an example of 
gentleness and modesty to the ladies of her court. It may 
give you some idea of the manners of that day if you read 
her rules of behavior, as put into verse by a poet of her 
court. He said to the ladies: 

" Do not be slovenly in your dress, nor put your fingers 
in the dish at table, nor blow your nose with the table- 
cloth. Do not rush into a room, but before you open the 



^•^% \ 




INTERIOR OF CHURCH AT BT. DENYS 



door give a gentle cough. Walk slowly to church, and 
do not run or jump in the streets. Those of you who 
cannot read must learn the hymns at home, so as to keep 
pace with the priests. Do not steal. Do not tell lies," 



Chapter XXIII 

A MAD KING 
A.D. 1380-1422 

While Charles the Fifth was dying, his brother, the 
Duke of Anjoii, hid in a room near the bed-chamber, and 
as soon as the king's death was announced stole the jew- 
els and plate. With his plunder he went off to Naples, 
whose queen, in dying, had made him her heir. Two other 
brothers, the dukes of Bourbon and Berry, did not care to 
take either jewels or risks ; they remained quiet, so the 
guardianship of the son and heir of Charles the Fifth, who 
was then a boy of twelve, fell to his other uncle, the Duke 
of Burgundy. 

By way of training the boy, who was gentle and timid, 
the duke took him to a battle-field in Flanders, where the 
French had just defeated the Flemings with a loss of eight 
thousand men, and made him walk his horse over the dead 
bodies which lay in heaps. I dare say the brutal lesson 
did not help to strengthen a mind which was never very 
strong. At sixteen Charles was married to a Bavarian 
princess named Isabeau, who was fourteen, and after the 
marriage there was a triumphal entry into Paris, at which 
the finest festival ever seen was held. The common peo- 
ple were dressed in green, the gentlemen in rose color, the 
ladies in scarlet with gold belts ; fountains ran with wine, 
milk, and rose-water. As the queen entered the St. Denys 
gate, two girls, dressed as angels, were lowered down by 
ropes, and asked her, with feigned surprise, if she hadn't 
come from Paradise? Then followed a dance which last- 
ed three days and three nights. If this sort of thing could 
only have lasted, little Isabeau might indeed have fancied 
herself in Paradise. 



136 [1380-1422 

Bat it did not last. At a masked ball the young king 
and four of his gentlemen disguised themselves as savages 
in cloth tights smeared with pitch, on which a thick lay- 
er of tow was stuck. The four gentlemen were tied to- 
gether. Some careless guest held a lighted candle to the 
dress of one of them, and the tow caught fire. In an in- 




ISABEAU OF BAVARIA 



stant all four were ablaze. One of them saved his life by 
leaping into a water-butt. The other three were burned 
to death after agonies untold. The king was saved ; his 
young aunt seized him, wrapped h&r skirt round him, and 
held him tight till the fire was put out. But the shock was 
terrible. 

Then he fell ill of a fever and was very slow to recover. 



1380-1422] 137 

When he got a little better he took the lead of a body of 
men to hunt a villain who had tried to murder his consta- 
ble. It was the middle of summer ; the sun's rays were 
scorching. He was riding through a sandy plain, where 
there was no shade. On his head he wore a scarlet velvet 
hood. He was dozing in the saddle, when a man ran up 
to him, seized his bridle, and shouted, 

"King, go no further. You are betrayed." 

The madman, for such he must have been, made his es- 
cape when the king's followers came up, but Charles, sud- 
denly starting in his saddle, drew his sword and, crying 
" Forward ! Death to the traitors !" fell upon his servants 
and pages and killed four of them before he could be dis- 
armed. They took him back to Paris and found that he 
was hopelessly mad. 

There were no doctors who could help him. He was 
sprinkled with holy water, made to confess, the commun- 
ion was given him, but he got no better. He said his name 
was George, that he had no wife. Quacks came from dis- 
tant parts and tried all kinds of medicines ; one of them 
made him drink water in which pearls had been dissolved. 
But it did no good. Then the doctors stopped trying to 
cure him and endeavored to amuse him, which was the 
most sensible thing they could do. Playing-cards, such as 
are used to-day, were invented to divert him, and his queen, 
Isabeau, and the ladies of his court took turns in playing 
with him. Sometimes he would be well enough to talk 
quite rationally; but the lucid intervals did not last long, 
and he would soon relapse into sombre melancholy, when 
he would cry and moan that he was in such pain, and 
would nobod}'- relieve him ? 

Meanwhile the Duke of Orleans, the king's brother, and 
the Duke of Burguijdy, his uncle, strove for the mastery 
in France. Now one was up and the other was down ; 
and whichever was down, and whichever was up, the 
people had to pay taxes which enraged them. The priests 
were on tJie side of the Puke of Burgundy, and refused 



138 



[1380-1422 



to open the churches when the Orleans party were in con- 
trol. 

On the 22d of November, 1407, the Dnke of Burgundy, 

whose name was Fearless Joh n, and 
the Duke Louis of Orleans supped 
together, kissed each other, hung 
on each other's neck, and swore 
eternal friendship. Such love and 
affection had never been seen be- 
fore. On the following evening, 
as Louis was going home at about 
eight, with only a few attendants, 
he was waylaid, in the Rue du 
Temple, by seven or eight men, 
masked and with red hoods on, 
who fell upon him with axes and 
swords and maces. He was 
heard to cry, " What's this ? 
What's this ?" To which his mur- 
derers answered, " Die ! Die !" 

After a moment the chief of 
them ordered, 

" Out with your torches ; he is 
dead enousfh." 

And one of them striking him 
a heavy blow on the head with a 
mace to make sure, they all ran away, leaving the body in 
the street. 

John the Fearless was not ashamed of his bloody deed. 
On the next day he said, 

" What has been done has been done by my orders," 
And he made haste to Burgundy, whence he returned to 
Paris with an army and compelled the poor mad king to 
give him a pardon. The priests j)reached sermons declar- 
ing that the murder was just, because the Duke of Orleans 
was God's enemy. 
Then actual war broke out between the two factious. 




DUKE OF BURGUNDY 



1380-1422] 139 

The old Orleans party took the name of Armagnacs, from 
their leader, the Count of Armagnac ; they threatened the 
city of Paris, which, in its old way, organized an army of 
its own for its own protection, with a butcher, a surgeon, 
and an executioner at its head. Neither the butcher nor 
the surgeon, nor even the executioner, however, could pre- 
vent the Armagnacs from getting possession of the place. 
They held it for a long time, and when the Duke of Bur- 
gundy sent a monk in to spy out the defences, the Ar- 
magnacs put him in a niche in a wall and walled him in. 
Then the Duke of Burgundy was declared a rebel, and his 
French estates were confiscated. 

Three years afterward the keys of the city were stolen 
by a friend of the duke's ; the gates were opened one dark 
night, a Burgundian army poured in, and the Count of Ar- 
magnac and all his followers were massacred. The count's 
body lay three days in the streets, and was kicked about 
by the Burgundians. So now Burgundy was up and Ar- 
magnac down. 

This did not last long. Fearless John made an appoint- 
ment to meet the dauphin on a bridge. When the duke 
appeared, a servant of the dauphin's bade him advance, 
as his master was waiting for him ; he stepped into a side- 
gallery on the bridge and was instantly killed. So now 
Burgundy was down, and down to stay for the present. 

During all the time these two factions had been fight- 
ing, the King of England, whose name was Henry the Fifth, 
had been conquering France bit by bit. The French 
met him in battle at a place called Agincourt, but once 
more they were so badly led that their knights and heavy 
men-at-arms, with the heavy armor which they wore and 
which their horses wore, were placed in a newly ploughed 
and marshy field. When the order came to move, they 
could not move. They were mired. The horses had sunk 
in the soft earth up to their knees, and partly from this 
reason the French were completely vanquished. After the 
battle the savage King of England cut the throats of his 
prisoners, refusing to admit them to ransom. 



140 [1380-1422 

He was then master of so much of France that he thought 
he might just as well claim the whole ; and indeed, so far 
as the French peasants and common people were concerned, 
it was quite possible that he might be an improvement on 
the mad king and the factions. He married the mad king's 
daughter Katharine, and in December, 1420, entered Paris, 
with the young Duke of Burgundy in deep mourning on 
one side and the mad king on the other. He became in 
name and in fact King of France, and Paris was so broken- 
hearted by the long struggles it had gone through that it 
had not a word to say by way of protest. The priests 
turned out in procession to meet the foreigner, oiFered him 
their relics to kiss, and performed high mass for him at 
Notre Dame. 

He was not very cheerful himself. He had a presenti- 
ment that he would not long reign over two kingdoms. 
Eighteen months after his entry into Paris he died of a 
fever, and two months afterward the mad king also died. 
The French were much touched at his death. Living, they 
had thought little of the poor king, because of his infirmity; 
but when he was dead they wept over his grave. 




JOAN OF A KG 



Chapter XXIV 
JOAN OF ARC 
A.D. 1429-1431 

After mad Charles died there were two claimants for 
the throne of France : his son Charles, who had been known 
as the Dauphin ; and a baby, who was the son of Henry the 
Fiftli of England and Katharine of France, the mad king's 
daughter. Charles was a puny youth with thin legs, who 



142 [1429-1431 

was so awkward that people laughed at him, and so poor 
that he could not pay for a pair of boots. The French, 
however, stood by him, wiiile the English took the side of 
the baby. Charles's friends held the city of Orleans, and 
there the English besieged them. The siege lasted seven 
months without much gain on either side, though the be- 
siegers from their towers threw stones weighing two hun- 
dred pounds into the place, and the French inside fired at 
the towers cannon-balls which sometimes hit their mark. 
If nothing unusual had happened this game of ball might 
have lasted a long time, but a new face was ]3ut on affairs 
by a most surprising event. 

In the village of Domremy on the river Meuse, in Lor- 
raine, there lived a farmer by the name of Arc, or Arcques, 
who had a daughter of nineteen, named Joan. She tended 
sheep in lonely j^astures, and at evening-time loved to pray 
before a statue of the Virgin in the dimly lit village 
church. Both in the church and in the pastures she moped 
and brooded over the wrongs of her country, and she often 
fancied, as people do when they are low-spirited or when 
they have fever, that angels came down to her, and that 
she could hear their voices. You must remember that in 
those parts of France people were very ignorant and very 
superstitious. One day she fancied that an angel told her 
to go and help the king drive the English out of France, 
and she had so worked herself up by praying and fasting 
and brooding that she felt that she must do as the angel 
ordered. Though she was only a girl, and could neither 
read nor write, she believed that she would not have been 
called if there had not been a chance that she would be of 
use. 

So she left her home, and with an uncle who was a 
wheelwright trudged over poor country roads, through 
woods and over hills, to a friend of the king's, to whom 
she told her story. He said she was a witch and had her 
forthwith sprinkled with holy water. But as she said the 
same things after she had been sprinkled as before, he be- 



1429-1431] 143 

gan to be afraid of her. He gave her a horse and a sword 
and two squires to lead her to where the king was. She 
asked the voices what clothes she should wear, and they 
said " Man's clothes, of course." So she put them on, boots 
and spurs and all, and rode off. 

The king received her in a hall which was lit by forty 
torches and filled with barons, and knights, and bishops, 
and priests. They questioned her, and cross - questioned 
her, and set traps to catch her ; but she answered all their 
questions in a low, sweet voice, telling her story in so sim- 
ple and truthful a way that she quite confounded them. 
Some were induced to think that she was a sorceress, and 
that the best thing to do with her was to burn her; but 
by this time her story had got wind, and the common peo- 
ple took her side so hotly that there would have been trou. 
ble if any one had tried to burn her then. 

As for the king, he took her part. Her sweet face and 
gentle ways pleased him very much indeed. He gave her 
a suit of white armor, set her on a prancing white horse, 
ordered a page to carry her battle-flag, on which there was 
a picture of God, and armed her with a battle-axe, which 
she hung at her saddle-bow. Thus accoutred, she set out 
for Orleans ; and there she put such new heart into the be- 
sieged French that they fell upon the English, and in ten 
days drove them away howling. Joan led the garrison, 
and though she was too tender-hearted to hurt any one, 
her battle-flag was always in the front of the fight. Twice 
she was wounded. Once, an archer shot an arrow into her 
neck, and the point came out -behind. And once, one of 
those great stones which the English hurled with their 
machines struck her on the head and knocked her sense- 
less. But when the arrow was pulled out, and the bruise 
on her head was dressed, she mounted her white horse and 
rode to the front in her old bold way. 

When the English marched away she was known every- 
where as the Maid of Orleans, and the common people be- 
gafl tQ worship a«d ^dore her, She even persuaded that 



144 [1429-1431 

poor-spirited creature the king to go to Rheims and get 
crowned. 

The English declared that it would never do to be beaten 
out of France by a girl. England was governed at the 
time by a priest — Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. 
He sent word to his armies in France that, cost what it 
might, the Maid of Orleans must be captured. It was 
easier to say this than to do it. Joan kept on riding at 
the head of the French, in her shining armor, on her white 
horse, and wherever she went the English made haste to 
get out of the way. They made an alliance with the Duke 
of Burgundy, and he sent an army to help them, but Joan 
beat the Burgundians as she had beaten the English. 
Among the priests and the nobles there were still some 
who held her for a witch, and in a sly way sprinkled her 
with holy water whenever her back was turned. But the 
French people trusted her, witch or no witch. 

One dark day, as she was besieging the town of Com- 
piegne, her men-at-arms took fright and ran away, leaving 
her alone, whereupon a Burgundian archer threw her from 
her horse and made her his prisoner. A roar of joy rose 
from the troops over the capture of this young girl. The 
man who took her sold her to John of Luxembourg ; he 
sold her to the Duke of Burgundy ; he sold her to the 
English. 

" Now," said Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop nf Winchester, 
with set teeth and an ugly flash in his eye, " I don't think 
Joan of Arc will give me any more trouble." 

They put the poor girl in irons and dragged her to Rouen, 
which was in possession of the English, to stand her trial 
for sorcery. As you know, the only sorcery she had been 
guilty of was putting fresh heart into the down-spirited 
people of France. But a court was summoned, with the 
Bishop of Beauvais at its head, a vicar of the Inquisition 
at his side, and" a score of priests to sit as judges — all of 
them sworn to do the dirty work of Cardinal Beaufort, 
Bishop of Winchester, 




JOAN OF ARC IN BATTLE 

Before thi8 court, for sixteen days, Joan had to appear, 
and to ansvver all kinds of cruel and absurd questions. She 
was sick and broken down. Every night the poor girl was 
taken to her cell in the dungeon, where she was made to 
sleep with double chains around her limbs. Her feet were 
fastened to a chain at the foot of her bed, and, to keep her 
straight, her body was tied to an iron beam. Here tor- 
turers visited her and warned her that she would probably 
be put to the torture on the day following. She was not, 
but she suffered the agonies of torture in expectation. She 
10 



146 [1429-1431 

had no friends, no advisers ; the mean King of France 
never stirred hand nor spoke word to save her. 

The trial had begun on the 21st of February, 1431. On 
May 31, at eight in the morning, she was taken out of her 
prison and placed in a cart with a confessor by her side. 
Eight hundred English soldiers, with swords drawn and 
lances in rest, escorted the cart. Ten thousand people lined 
the streets through which it passed. The cart stopped at 
the fish-market, in which three platforms had been built. 
One was for Cardinal Beaufort. Another was for the judges 
and the prisoner. On the third was a tall stake; its base 
was hidden by a pile of firewood. When Joan had taken 
her place a priest preached a sermon on her wickedness, 
and the Bishop of Beauvais urged her to repent. A silence 
fell ; it was thought the doomed girl might say something. 
She was on her knees. As death drew near she w^as, like 
other girls, very much afraid, and cried and sobbed. She 
would have clasped her poor hands, but they were bound. 
She feebly murmured, "Good people, ]3ray for me !" 

No one who was present — neither the brutal judges nor 
the savage cardinal himself — could keep back his tears ; 
as for the people, they broke out in sobs and groans. 

But a soldier called to the priest who stood by Joan, 

"What's this, priest? do you mean us to dine here?" 

And two men-at-arms seized the Maid, dragged her to 
the stake, and roughly bade the executioner do his duty. 
She bowed her head, her lips were seen to move as in prayer, 
the flames rose, she gave one shriek — " Jesus !" — and all was 
over. 

If you go to Rouen you may see, under the long shadow 
of the old cathedral tower, a statue of Joan of Arc, erected 
on the square where she was burned. And so long as the 
town of Domremy remained in the possession of the French 
it was a law of the French army that no regiment should 
march through it without presenting arms and having its 
band play a requiem. 

The English — who were a very different people then 




THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN 



from the English of to-day— fancied that the death of Joan 
of Arc would remove their most dangerous enemy. But it 
did not help them much. The baby king never reigned in 



148 [1429-1481 

France, though he was once crowned, and after Joan's death 
the English lost ground year by year in France, till they 
were elbowed to the ver}'- sea-coast. 

Charles the Seventh was king in name if not in fact for 
nearly forty years. But he was so helpless a creature that 
in all that time he did nothing by which you can remem- 
ber him. For twenty years he was ruled by a beautiful and 
gentle lady named Agnes Sorel, who seems always to have 
advised him wisely ; she died very suddenly, probably from 
poison given through the arts of the dauphin, who became 
Louis the Eleventh. His sister Katharine, who had been 
the wife of King Henry the Fifth of England, married a 
Welshman named Owen Tudor after Henry's death ; and 
his mother turned out very badly after she lost her mad 
husband. When her little grandson, English Henry, was 
brought to Paris to be crowned, the grandmother stood at 
a window as the boy passed and burst into tears ; but the 
stern cardinal who had Henry in charge would not let him 
see her. She died very poor, without a friend to give her 
a cup of water on her death-bed. 




LOUIS XI 



Chapter XXV 



LOUIS THE ELEVENTH 



A.D. 1461-1483 



About the middle of the fifteenth century the most 
splendid court in Europe was that of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy. He was a greater man than the King of France 
himself. He not only ruled over Burgundy, but his power 
was felt all through Holland, Flanders, Alsace, and Lor- 
raine, and the country which lies between modern France 
and Germany, from the mouth of the Rhine to the rich 
slopes in which the blue Rhone begins its flow. Some 
places had sovereigns of their own. Liege was ruled by 
bishops, who were terrible fighters ; and the lord of a 
large territory was a fierce baron, whose name was Will- 
iam de ]a Marck, but who was generally called the Wild 
Boar of the Ardennes. But they all bowed to the Duke 
of Burs^undy. 

He held his court at Brussels, and there he gathered 
around him the most learned scholars and the most gallant 
soldiers of the day ; to attract them he created an order 
of the GrPlden Fleece, which was more thought of than any 



150 [1461-1483 

other order in Christendom. He gave fetes more magnifi- 
cent than any that had ever been seen before. They were 
sometimes banquets, at which every side dish was a group 
of people. One contained twenty-four musicians, each play- 
ing on his own instrument — I hope the guests did not eat 
them. Another was a church with towers and bells, and 
bell-ringers who called good people to mass ; it was big 
enough for grown people to go inside and kneel at the 
altars. Another was an elephant held by a Saracen giant; 
on its back was a tower, and in the tower was a nun weep- 
ing for the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. 

Then, there were out-of-door sports : tournaments at 
which knights in armor charged furiously with lance in 
rest and tumbled each other into the dust, while lovely 
ladies clapped their hands and threw their rings, their 
brooches, their ear-rings, and even their back combs, to 
their own true knights ; and pretty dances on the green, 
in which twelve girls in crimson satin figured as the virt- 
ues and danced with twelve gentlemen, who I suppose 
must have represented the twelve vices. 

Better than all these, the Dukes of Burgundy had begun 
a library. The art of printing had just been discovered, 
and books were growing more plentiful than they had 
been ; still, there were few places where so many of them 
had been gathered together as there were in the library of 
the Duke of Burgundy. To that library Louis, the son of 
King Charles of France, had, some time before his father's 
death, betaken himself, in order, as he said, to read good 
books. He had no money, but the Duke of Burgundy 
made him an allowance. His father, who knew his son 
well, grinned when he heard of it and said, 

"My brother Burgundy has let in a pretty fox among 
his chickens," 

When Charles the Seventh died, the Duke of Burgundy 
insisted on crowning Louis at Rheims. The contrast be- 
tween the two was strange. The duke came with a pro- 
cession which was led by a hundred and fifty magnificent 



1461-1483] 151 

wagOHS, drawn by powerful horses with silver bells on 
their necks and embroidered velvet housings on their 
backs ; in the wagons were gold and silver plate and 
money to be scattered among the j^oor. Then followed 
a string of fat Burgandian nobles buried in jewels. Then, 
with pages and archers around him, his tall form mounted 
on a prancing war-horse, rode the duke; the tail of the pro- 
cession was a drove of fat oxen and sheep for the feast. 

The King of France had no procession. He was dressed 
in a coarse gray gown, with a rosary around his neck, and 
an old hat, in the band of which there was a leaden image 
of a saint. In this guise he went to be ci'owned, and after 
the coronation he and the duke went together to Paris. 
The Parisians observed to each other what a mean iiorure 
the king cut, and how much more grand the duke was. 

To celebrate the coronation, a splendid tournament was 
given, at which the bravest knights rode, and charged each 
other, in the hope of winning the crown of victory from 
the hands of the exquisite queen of love and beauty. King 
Louis refused to ride ; but he sent a knio^ht to take his 
place, in mean, shabby armor, but mounted on a very pow- 
erful horse. No one knew who he was. But when he had 
overthrown all the knights, one after another, he was made 
to raise his visor, and it appeared that he was a groom in 
the king's stables. The nobles did not easily forgive the 
king for the slight he had put on them. 

But if Louis was not fine to look at, nor considerate of 
the delicate feelings of his nobles, he soon showed that he 
knew his trade of king. He found out that the nobles had 
not paid their taxes for many years ; he laid hands on their 
property to pay himself. He discovered that by an under- 
standing with the pope they appointed the bishops and 
high officers of the Church ; he took that business into his 
own hands. Of course this enraged the feudal lords and 
the churchmen too, but Louis kept such close watch on 
them that they could not stir without his knowing it. His 
plan Avas to set one feudal lord against another, and ^^^ 



152 [1461-1483 

them on to a fight ; while they were fighting the king took 
their towns. He was not fond of fighting himself. He was 
once induced to go to war, chiefly through the advice of a 
Cardinal Balue ; but he was beaten, and he revenged him- 
self against the cardinal by locking him up in an iron cage 
and keeping him there for eleven years. 

It was during that war that he had the narrowest escape 
of his life. He went to see the Duke of Burgundy, the son 
of the old duke who had been at his coronation. They 
hated each other, and both knew it. Louis, fearful of being 
murdered, begged to be lodged in the castle of Peronne. 
When he went in the door was locked on him, and there 
he was a prisoner in the hands of his worst enemy. He 
was terribly frightened. When the duke visited him and 
asked him if he would help capture the town of Liege, which 
had revolted, and which Louis had solemnly vowed to suc- 
cor in its revolt, the treacherous king replied, 

" With a great deal of pleasure !" 

They went, the duke and the king together, to Liege, 
which was counting confidently on the help which the king 
had promised. The place was soon taken. Then said the 
duke, " What would you do with Liege if it were yours ?" 

Said the king, smiling, "My father had a tree near his 
palace in which ravens had built nests, and at night their 
croaking disturbed him. He had the nests destroyed, but 
the ravens built them again and again. Then he had the 
tree rooted up, and he slept better afterward." 

The duke took the hint. Every building in Liege was 
burned but the churches. The people were drowned and 
burned, or shot, or driven into the woods to perish of cold 
and hunger. And I suppose the duke slept better after- 
ward. 

But Louis was not the man to forget his little adventure 
in the castle of Peronne. He arrano-ed a meetino- between 
the King of England and himself. You may fancy how the 
kings trusted each other when you learn that at this meet- 
ing the two were separated by a lattice - work through 



1461-1483] 153 

which they talked, but which was too close to let a man's 
arm through. Here, through the lattice, a treaty was made 
by which for a large sum of money the King of England 
agreed to prevent the Duke of Burgundy from invading 
France. Shortly after that the duke made war on Rene, 
the Duke of Lorraine, one of his vassals. Louis helped 
Rene with money. A battle was fought. After the battle 
the Duke of Burgundy could not be found. It was not till 
two days afterward that his body was discovered, naked 
and frozen, partly hidden by the snow, and gnawed by dogs 
and wolves. Perhaps he understood before he died what 
lie had made the poor people of Liege suffer. At any rate, 
King Louis understood how he had come by his end. 

One by one Louis managed to get all his enemies among 
the feudal lords out of the way. To the Constable St. Pol, 
one of the greatest of them, Louis wrote that grave ques- 
tions were pending at Paris in which his head would be of 
the greatest service. St. Pol came, and his head did serve, 
for Louis cut it off. The Duke of Nemours was shut up 
in an iron cage and was only taken out to be tortured and 
beheaded. Louis called on the Count of Armagnac and 
had him killed in his wife's presence. Another duke he 
sent to a prison for life. He was so suspicious of every 
one that one day he took the Duke of Nemours out of his 
iron cage and, having put him to the torture, asked him the 
question, 

" Whom can I trust among the nobles of my court ?" 

The agonized man caught his breath and gasped, 

" No one, sire ; not one." 

He lived a wretched life, as you may suppose. Toward 
the last he shut himself up in a castle at Plessis les Tours, 
which he made exceedingly strong, and garrisoned with 
Scotchmen. When, he ventured out of the sight of the 
sentinels he trembled all over. When he took exercise he 
was accompanied by his barber, Oliver Daim, and his exe- 
cutioner, Tristan l'Ermite,who carried a hangman's rope in 
his pocket m^ often hanged people to the branches of trees 



154 [1461-1483 

without a trial when their behavior or their speech roused 
the king's suspicions. All three made jokes while the hang- 
ing was going on — coarse, poor jokes, such as you might 
expect from vile, brutal natures. When the Parisians saw 
the king with his two friends they ran away ; women 
caught up their children and hid them. 

He was always short of money — he spent so much in 
bribing feudal lords and kings, and in hiring spies to find 
out what was going on and what people were saying of 
him. He would never pay his servants their wages ; when 
he was in good humor they coaxed him to give them a 
bishopric or an abbey or a rich wife ; when no such 
chance offered they stole, and when the king found it 
out he made them divide. He spent little on himself. 
To the day of his death he wore, when he went out, an 
old coarse gray gown and broken hat like those in which 
he figured at his coronation. He said he could not afford 
to buy new clothes. But when he received envoys from 
foreign countries he wore a rich robe of crimson satin 
trimmed with fur. 

He was very pious and never did anything without 
praying. In his youth he carried in the band of his hat a 
leaden image of a favorite saint ; in his old age he wore 
saints all round his hat, and when prayers to one of them 
were not answered he tried the others in turn. He was 
greatly given to praying to the Virgin Mary, whom he 
appointed Countess of Boulogne, a place he much liked. 

He had no friends. His wife was dead. His son he 
hated. When his daughter and her husband visited him, 
Oliver Daim and Tristan I'Ermite followed them about 
on tiptoe, suspecting them of a design to kill the king. 
His only pleasure through life, besides lying and cheating, 
was hunting. A year or two before his death he had a 
stroke of paralj^^sis, which prevented him from mounting his 
horse. He then had little dogs trained to hunt mice, and 
the lame old man spent many an hour hopping round his 
fporn with these dogs, chasing mice which scampered 



1461-1483] 155 

from corner to corner, vainly looking for a hole to creep 
into. 

He was terribly afraid of dying. And as he grew 
worse after his second stroke of paralysis, he sent to all 
parts of Europe for astrologers and physicians and had 
prayers said for him by the bishops and the most pious 
men in France, but he could not help seeing that his body 
was dying by inches. On August the 23d, 1483, he had a 
third stroke, and he died five days afterward. He had 
begged his attendants to warn him of the end, but to do 
it gently. When they saw that there was nothing more 
to be feared from him, they shouted the truth in his ear. 

When you come to read larger histories of France than 
this, you will find that Louis the Eleventh is much thought 
of because he broke down the power of the feudal lords 
and made France larger than it had ever been before. 
This was a good work, and he deserves all the credit of it. 
But he was false, treacherous, deceitful, and cruel, and, as 
I think that falsehood, treachery, deceit, and cruelty are 
as disgraceful in a king as in a common man, I do not see 
how you can give him your respect or affection. 



Chapter XXVI 

THE GREAT LADY 
A.D. 1483-1498 

Louis the Eleventh left three children : Anne of 
Beaujen, his eldest, who was twenty-two, and who was after- 
ward known as the Great Lady ; Joan, who was nineteen, 
and was married to Louis, Duke of Orleans ; and Charles, 
who was thirteen. By Louis's will Charles was to succeed 
hira as king, and his sister Anne was to be regent. 

This arrangement suited all parties except the Duke of 
Orleans, who thought he should have been regent instead 
of Anne. He stirred up the people of Brittany — as though 
it mattered to them who was Regent of France — and they 
took the field against Anne. But she had not been called 
the Great Lady for nothing. She gathered an army under 
a gallant soldier named La Tremouille, swooped down 
upon the Bretons and their allies at a place near Rennes, 
and utterly discomfited them. She took her brother-in- 
law, the Duke of Orleans, prisoner, and put him in prison, 
locking him up at night for greater safety in an iron 
cage. 

In that prison he pined and languished. His wdfe Joan, 
who was loving and true, though she was ugly and de- 
formed, never ceased to beg his release from her sister 
Anne and her brother Charles, but in vain. He was at 
times so neglected that this faithful wife had to sell her 
jewels to get him food and clothes in his jail. Anne, the 
Great Lady, was unrelenting ; she would not answer Joan's 
letters nor allow her to enter her presence. But Charles 
had soft moments, and in one of these, Joan begging him 
on her knees with many tears to let her husband go, he 



1483-1498] 157 

took horse, drew rein at the prison door, set Louis free, 
and fell upon his neck, kissing and hugging him as the 
custom of that day was. 

I think you can figure to yourself the dark cloud which 
settled on the Great Lady's face when she heard of this 
freak of her brother's. She said nothing, but she thought 
to herself that it was time to get Charles married, so that 
he should have some one to look after him. 

He was nineteen years old. Years before he had been 
betrothed to Marguerite of Austria, who was now a little 
girl eleven years old and at school. But the Great Lady 
had a much better match for him in her eye. The duchy 
of Brittany, one of the richest of the old feudal duchies, 
had fallen to a girl — Anne of Brittany, who was sixteen 
years old. She was pretty in face, but short, and lame in 
one foot, and though she tried to hide her lameness by 
wearing a high heel on the lame foot, it was easily noticed. 
But she had plenty of spirit, was bright and self-willed, 
and, being Lady of Brittany, she had suitors in swarms, 
from old widowers, with large families and pimply noses, 
to young gallants, with long swords and short purses. 
Among these she chose Maximilian of Austria, who was 
a giant, a good scholar, and a valiant soldier. She was be- 
trothed to him, as Charles had been to Marguerite, and 
in those days, as you know, a betrothal was almost the 
same thing as a marriage. 

The Great Lady perceived that a marriage between 
Charles and Anne would in fact be a union between 
France and Brittany, and she sent an envoy to Anne to 
find out her mind. 

Anne replied that she was betrothed to Maximilian and 
rather liked what she had heard of him — she had never 
seen him ; she rather thought that she would like to be a 
giant's wife. 

Thereupon the Great Lady invaded Brittany. You may 
think this a curious way of making love, but it was the 
way of the time, and Anne understood it. For, Charles 



158 



[1483-1498 



being with the French army and Anne with the Breton 
army, a meeting was arranged between them ; and the 
end of that meeting was that they were engaged on the 
spot and were married shortly afterward, the pope having 
agreed to annul the betrothals. Anne must have thought 
more of her people than of herself, for Charles was not 
a beauty. He was short and clumsy, with a big head, 
fishy eyes, fat lips which slobbered, a hooked nose, and a 
nervous twitching of eyelids and cheeks. To add to all, 
he could not read or write. 

Such as he was, he now resolved to make the world hear 
of him, and, without reason, provocation, or pretext, in 




CHARLES VIII. CROSSING THE ALPS 

October, 1494, he crossed the Alps at the head of an army 
and invaded Italy, marching from Savoy to Naples. The 
Italians were so astonished that no one thought of resistance. 
On New Year's Eve, just as night fell, the French, lighting 
their torches as they went, marched up the main street of 
Rome, establishing guard stations, setting up gibbets to 



1483-1498] 159 

liaDg knaves on, and planting tents in the squares ; while 
King Charles, in full armor, with his lance in rest, rode at 
the head of his body-guard, with trumpets sounding and 
drums beating all around him. The pope, who must have 
thought that Charles was out of his mind, sent word that 
he was very glad to see him, and would he please to call at 
the Vatican and pay his respects ? 

From Rome Charles went to Naples, and, it chancing to 
occur to him that sooner or later the Italians might object 
to being invaded in this way, he divided his army into two 
parts, leaving one at Naples, where it speedily melted 
away from hunger and disease, and taking with himself 
the other, which, after a smart battle near Milan, managed 
to cross the Alps again, and get home. 

After this Charles considered himself a great conqueror, 
like Caesar or Alexander the Great, and the French said 
that they were quite of the opinion that he was. Fetes 
were given in his honor, at which the shows were more 
splendid, the dresses more gorgeous, the dancing more 
graceful, and the merry-making more vociferous than any- 
thing that had been seen before in France. To amuse the 
queen plays were got up under the direction of an officer 
who was called the King of the Fools, and who arranged 
spectacles which must have been like Christmas pantomimes 
}^ou see at the theatres at this day. King and queen, 
courtiers and soldiers, did nothing all day but dance, sing, 
and frolic in these revels. France was fairly quiet. The 
old robber bands had been crushed out. Farmers ploughed 
their fields in safety. People were not in much danger if 
they neither stole nor killed. The gay nation was really 
gay. For the Great Lady, while king and queen frolicked, 
gave the people a good and just government. 

All was thus going well when the king, walking through 
an unfinished corridor in a palace he was building at Am- 
boise, struck his head against a beam. He did not at first 
notice that he had hurt himself, but went on talking and 
watching a game of teunis, Presently he staggered and 




CHATEAU D'AMBOISE 



fell. A mattress was brought ; he was laid on it. They 
dared not move him ; and on that mattress, in that dark 
and dirty corridor, with shavings and chips all around him, 
he died three hours afterward. 

This was in April, 1498. Just four months afterward the 
great sailor Columbus first set foot on the continent of 
America. He had landed on several of the islands of the 
West Indies six years before. But it was not till August 
2, 1498, that he discovered the mainland. 



\ >^ 



Chapter XXVII 

LOUIS THE TWELFTH 
A.D. 1498-1515 

Charles the Eighth left no children ; he was succeed- 
ed on the throne by that Louis of Orleans whom the Great 
Lady had kept so long in jail, and who was the husband of 
ugly Joan. He is known as Louis the Twelfth. You will 
be sorry to hear that his first act was to turn against the 
wife who had been so loyal to him in the days of his trouble. 

In order to make it certain that Brittany would remain 
part of France, he got the pope to divorce him from his 
faithful Joan ; then he married Charles's widow, Anne. 
It broke Joan's heart. She said meekly to her husband, 
" I hope, sire, that you will be hapjDier with another than 
you have been with me." And then she shut herself up in 
a convent, and devoted the rest of her life to good works. 

Like Charles, Louis made war on Italy, though there was 
no reason for the war, and neither side could gain anything 
by it, while it was sure to cause infinite distress and misery 
to the Italians, and was likely to end—as it did — in the 
French being driven home in defeat and disgrace. The 
French were, I think wrong-headed, and crazy for con- 
quest and adventure, while the Italians were always fight- 
ing among themselves. 

There was a duke of Milan whose name was Ludovico 
Sforza, but who was generally called the Blackamoor, be- 
cause of his swarthy skin. He invited the French into 
Italy in order to overthrow the King of Naples. When he 
had got them in he turned against them and would not let 
them out. Him the King of France, with the help of val- 
iant captains of whom I will presently tell you, hotly pur- 
V 



162 [1498-1515 

sued and at last caught, though he had tried to hide among 
the Swiss guards, wearing his hair in a coif, putting on a 
crimson satin doublet and scarlet stockings, and holding a 
halberd in his fist. The Blackamoor was locked in a dun- 
geon thirty feet under ground in the grim old castle of 
Loches ; the walls of the dungeon were eight feet thick ; 
through one barred window a thin ray of light crept in, 
and by leaning his ear to this window the prisoner could 
hear the shouts and the laughter of the courtiers as they 
jousted outside. In that castle, after many years' confine- 
ment, the Blackamoor died. 

One of the most valiant of the French generals was a 
nephew of King Louis — a boy of twenty-three, whose name 
was Gaston of Foix. He was a born soldier, handsome, 
gallant, and one who never knew fear or pity. On Easter 
Sunday morning, in the year 1512, as he walked on the 
bank of a stream, he met a party of Spaniards who had 
crossed into Italy to help the Italians. 

" Gentlemen," said he, " I am going to cross that stream 
to-day, and I will not recross it alive unless I win the day." 

He went back to his tent and put on his finest clothes 
and his most splendid armor. But he had vowed to his 
fair lady — a curious person she must have been — that he 
would bathe his arm to the elbow in the blood of his ene- 
mies, and he cut off his right sleeve at the elbow. He did 
win the day, but on his w^ay to his tent he was beset and 
stabbed to death. In his beautiful face there were fifteen 
sword-thrusts. 

A still more glorious hero of these days was the Cheva- 
lier Bayard, " fearless and blameless." He started for the 
wars when he was only fourteen ; he bestrode a little roan 
pony and wore a suit of satin and velvet, in the pocket of 
which w^as a purse containing six dollars. At the siege of 
Milan he pursued the enemy so hotly that he was taken 
prisoner and brought before the Blackamoor Duke of 
whom I have told you. Said Blackamoor, " Whom have 
we here ?" 



1498-1515] 



163 



And when the boy explained how he had been taken, 
the duke, pleased with his manly speech and his open face, 
asked him what he would like ? 

"My horse and my arms," answered Baj^ard, "so I can 
get back to my master the King of France." 

"Sir Captain," said Blackamoor to one of his men, "let 
his horse and his arms be found." 

And he sent him back to his master, observing, "If all 
the men-at-arms in France were like him, I should have a 
bad chance." 

At the siege of Brescia, Bayard was grievously wounded ; 
he turned to his men and said, 



^1 




CHEVALIER BAYARD DEFENDING A BRIDGE 



164 [1498-1515 

"March on, comrades. As for rae, I cannot pull farther, 
for I am a dead man." 

They took him to a house where a woman lived with two 
daughters. Her husband had fled when the soldiers drew 
near, and her daughters had hidden under the hay in the 
garret. When the woman saw how badly Bayard was 
wounded, she bade the archers who bore him carry him 
into her best room, so she could nurse him. 

"All that is in this house is yours by right of war," said 
she ; " may it be your pleasure to spare my honor and my 
life, and those of my two young daughters." 

" Madame," said the young soldier, " I know not whether 
I am to live or die. But so long as I live, your daughters 
and you shall be safe. If any come to this house to trouble 
you, say that I — the Chevalier Bayard — lie here wounded." 

In five or six weeks he was well enough to get on his 
horse, and then the w^oman who had nursed him expected 
that he would demand ransom, as the custom of that dsiy 
was. So, falling on her knees before him, with many tears 
and thanks for his gentle behavior, she offered him twenty- 
five hundred gold ducats in a steel box. But he only 
laughed and bade her fetch her daughters. The girls 
came in, pale and trembling, for those were rough times. 
The eldest said, 

"My lord, we two poor girls, whom you have done the 
honor to guard, are come to take leave of you, to thank 
you, and, having nothing else in their power, to say that 
they will be forever bound to pray for you." 

To which he answered, 

"It is for me to thank you. Fighting-men are not laden 
with pretty things to present to ladies. But your lady 
mother has given me two thousand five hundred ducats : 
here is one thousand for each of you, and five hundred 
which I entreat your mother to give to the poor. Only I 
beg you all to pray God for me." 

And with that he poured the gold into their aprons. 

When his wound closed he returned tg the array and 




CHEVALIER BAYAKD 

fought wherever the enemy was met. He was the bravest 
soldier the king had, and he was generous and merciful. 
When he found that the people of a village had been driv- 
en into a cave, and two soldiers of his army had piled hay, 
straw, and wood at the mouth of the cave and stifled them, 
he caught the rascals, one of whom had but one ear while 
the other had none at all, and hanged them at the entrance. 
He met his de^th like a soldier, JJe was shot whil§ 



166 [1498-1515 

crossing the Alps. When he felt the Avound, he knew that 
it was mortal. He bade his men set him ao;ainst a tree, 
with his face to the enemy. He confessed to a priest ; then, 
to one who pitied him, he said, "I need no pity. I die the 
death of a man of honor." 

And so indeed he did. 

But all his honor and all his valor could not help the 
French to conquer Italy. After the bad Pope Alexander 
the Sixth there came a fighting pope, Julius the Second, 
who, when he was eighty years old, went out in his papal 
robes and pointed the cannon with his own hands. And 
then there came a very wise pope, Leo the Tenth, who 
made alliances with the princes all round him against the 
French, and in the end Louis had to creep back to France 
no better off than when he began. He made a bargain with 
Ferdinand of Spain, but was cheated, and when he com- 
plained that he had been deceived the Spaniard answered, 

" The King of France is complaining that I have de- 
ceived him twice ; he lies ; I have deceived him more than 
ten times." 

Louis had a little daughter whose name w^as Claude. 
He betrothed her to Charles of Austria, who was the son 
of a craz}'^ daughter of this Ferdinand, named Juana. The 
betrothal took place at Blois. Crazy Juana, with her hus- 
band Philip, arrived at Blois at night, and climbed up the 
Bteep road to the castle by the light of torches of yellow 
wax fixed against the walls. Philip went first, between 
files of archers, to a room in which Louis was sitting by 
the chimney. Then came crazy Juana, whom Louis kissed 
and sent to his wife's apartments. The queen received her 
warmly, and Juana kissed her, and also as many of her 
ladies of honor as she could. Then the Spaniard was put 
to bed in her own room, where she was visited by six pages, 
bearing lights, and half a dozen ladies, bearing gold boxes 
full of sweetmeats, which were poured on the bed. At the 
door stood an apothecary to physic the strange lady in 
case she needed physicking, as perhaps she might after so 



^ m 











PORTAL OF THE CHATEAU DES BLOIS 



much candy. And after all, the betrothal came to notlnng. 
Claude married her cousin Francis. 

It was soon after this that Queen Anne died. Louis was 
deeply distressed; she had been a good wife and a wise 
adviser. But it was decided that in order to insure the 
French alliance with England, he must marry the sister of 
the King of England. She was a pretty young girl of six- 
teen, who was already betrothed to one man and in love 




MONUMENT TO CHEVALIER BAYARD 



with another. Louis was a tall, thin man of fifty, who 
lived on boiled beef, took no pleasure in anything but 
hawking, was often ill, slouched in his gait, and went to 
bed when the sun went down. Still, the marriage took 
place. Louis only lived four months afterward. 

Barring his foolish war with Italy, Louis the Twelfth 
was a good king, as kings went. He made a number of 
excellent laws, maintained order, and promoted trade and 
industry. It is said that in his reign there were fifty pros- 



1498-1515] 169 

perous traders for one who could have been found in the 
reign of Louis the Eleventh. Travel was pretty safe, and 
public inns — which had come into use a few years before 
his time — were fairly good. Robbers were hunted down 
and severely punished. The people did not complain of 
being too heavily taxed. 

The credit of most of the good deeds of his reign belongs 
to a wise priest who was his chief counsellor — Cardinal 
Amboise. He was one of the ablest men of his day, and 
one of the best and purest priests who had ever held 
power in France. 




FRANCIS I., FROM A COIN 



Chapter XXVIII 

FRANCIS THE FIRST 

A.D. 1515-1547 

Francis the First, who succeeded Louis the Twelfth, 
was his cousin and had married his daughter. He was 3 
handsome, dashing young man of twenty-one when he came 
to the French throne. As he grew older his face became 
gross and sensual. Louis the Twelfth, who knew him well, 
had warned his courtiers that when that big boy came to 
the throne he would spoil everything. 

His first business was with Italy. The Italians were 
fighting among themselves. Milan was fighting with Ven- 
ice, Genoa was fighting with Naples, Florence was fighting 
with Pisa, the pope and Spain were fighting with them all; 
and besides this, in many of the towns the people were 
fighting against their rulers, and the rulers were hiring 
Swiss and Germans to fight against their subjects. Such 
horrible confusion prevailed that from various places came 
invitations to Francis to take a hand in the fight on one 
side or another. 

It was just the work he liked. And when he swooped 



lois-isiVJ 171 

down on northern Italy with an army of sixty thousand 
men and won a great battle at Marignano, scattering the 
Swiss mercenaries, and sending them home ragged, wound- 
ed, with Hags torn and bleeding feet, he felt very proud 
indeed. The French, too, were proud of him at first; but 
when they found that he increased the taxes and spent 
their money like water on his own pleasures they were not 
quite as proud as before. They found that he thought a 
great deal more of himself than of them. He spent his 
time in hunting and jousting and banqueting in castles on 
the Loire; when a Frenchman wanted to see him on busi- 
ness, he could not tell where to find him. 

To gain the favor of the King of England Francis in- 
vited him to France, and the two monarchs met at a place 
since known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Each tried 
to outdo the other in splendor. Cardinal Wolsey, who 
was the minister of the King of England and looked like 
a king himself, appeared with a train a mile long, of mail- 
clad men-at-arms and gayly dressed courtiers on prancing 
steeds and snow-white mules, all covered with silver har- 
ness ; the Constable Bourbon, who carried the sword of 
France before Francis, looked even more like a king, and 
bore himself so haughtily that Henr}^ observed to Francis, 
" If I had a subject like that, his head would not be long 
on his shoulders." In order to cut a fine figure some of 
the French nobles made themselves poor for life. 

The two kings slowly rode to the place of meeting, and 
when they met flung their arms round each other's neck, 
and embraced from their saddles. 

Next day, to show his confidence, Francis called on Eng- 
lish Henry before he was uj) and put his shirt on for him. 
Then the two kings went out to a tournament. At either 
end of the grounds were artificial trees made of cloth of 
gold, with leaves of green silk ; along the sides were pavil- 
ions, tapestried with the most precious silks, satins, and 
embroidered cloths. Then followed tourneys, in which 
Francis showed more grace than the Englishman; archery 



172 llol5-lU1 

contests, in which the English had the best of it; and 
wrestling-matches, in one of which Francis threw Henry 
more heavily than he liked. The two kings exchanged 
chains and tried to exchange coats, but Henry was so fat 
that Francis's coat would not button around him. This and 
the wrestling - match rather displeased the Englishman, 
and the kings parted without liking each other any the bet- 
ter for the meeting. 

To console himself Francis invaded Italy again, and this 
time, having a great soldier, the Emperor Charles the Fifth, 
ao-ainst him, the King of France came to grief. The time 
he should have given to preparing for battle he had spent on 
building a luxurious palace at Como, and the money which 
should have gone to his troops he had wasted on his pleas- 
ures. The battle was fought at Pavia, and was so hot that 
somebody who looked on said that he could see nothing but 
heads and arms flying in the air. Francis was completely 
beaten and taken prisoner. His army was destroyed. Some 
died of hunger, some of sickness, some sold their horses 
and clothes for food and got back to France so worn out 
by hunger, thirst, and cold that when they we're taken in 
and warmed and fed, they died or went mad from the reac- 
tion. From that time to the days of Napoleon Bonaparte, 
the French never troubled Italy again. 

When Francis was taken, he wrote to his mother that all 
was lost but honor. You may, perhaps, be inclined to think 
that by that time Francis had but little honor to lose. 

He was taken a prisoner to Spain, and was only released 
on condition that he should marry the emperor's sister — 
his own wife, whom he had treated shamefully, having 
(^ied — and should surrender certain territories to the em- 
peror. He married the lady. But before he left his prison 
he made a secret declaration before a notary that he did 
not intend to carry out the rest of his bargain. He said 
he was a prisoner and not free to make a treaty. From 
which you may conclude that wherever he lost his honor, 
it was most certainly lost. 



1515-1547] 



173 



He reigned twenty years longer, and during that period 
he carried on four more wars with the Emperor Charles, 
in which neither side won much advantage. Between the 
wars, the two monarchs pretended to love each other like 
brothers. Once, Charles asked leave of Francis to cross 
France to go to Ghent, where a rebellion had broken out. 
When the king's fool heard of it, he made out a list of 
fools with the emperor's name at the head. The king, see- 




FRAXCIS I 



1*74 [1515-1547 

ing the list, asked the fool, " How if I should let the em- 
peror go through?" 

" Tlien," replied the fool, " I should strike out the em- 
peror's name and put yours in its place." 

Francis let tlie emperor through, for all that. 

These wars, and the vast sums which the king wasted 
on his pleasures, brought back the old troubles to the 
French people. The peasants could not till their fields 
properly ; every penny workingmen made was eaten by 
tax-gatherers; the crops were short, and the poor people 
lived on bread made of acorns and soup made of weeds. 
The women grew thin and pale, and the voice of children 
crying from hunger was heard all over the country. Vast 
numbers of women and children died of cold and famine. 

But the king had always money for new palaces, fine 
bronzes, pictures, and musical instruments ; for jewels of 
gold, diamonds, and pearls ; for velvets and silk from 
Genoa ; for beasts and birds, camels, ostriches, and lions 
from Africa ; for a clever card-player from Spain ; for a 
horse for the royal cook, so that he could always be on 
hand for the king's dinner ; for the beautiful ladies of the 
court, with whom Francis spent his time and on whom he 
lavished presents. He did not care much for his hungry 
people, but he cared a great deal for show. He wrote pret- 
ty verses himself, and he helped others who wrote, as well 
as those who built fine buildings or carved fine statues. 
It is the fashion to call his era the period of the Renaissance, 
which means that art and letters were then born again ; 
and perhaps he had something to do with the birth. But 
it was much more largely due to a waking of the public 
mind from a sleep which had lasted a thousand years, 
and that waking was seen more plainly in religion than 
in anj^thing else. 

For a long time good Christians had been dissatisfied 
with the Church. They hated to see the popes mixing in 
politics and contending with kings ; and they were not 
pleased with the tax which the popes levied on Christian 




THE BURNING OP HERETICS 



countries in the shape of Peter's pence, or with the raising 
of money by the sale of pardons for sins past or to come. 
In every country brave and intelligent priests had risen 
to protest, and to say that these things were wrong. But 
no two of them agreed what should be done, and the Church 
was able to break down each separately, either by burn- 
ing him as a heretic, or by keeping him in prison, or in 
some other way. 



l'J'6 [1515-1547 

Thus, John Huss, of Prague, protested, was caught, 
tried, and burned at Constance. Girolamo Savonarola, of 
Florence, was seized and was hanged and burned. John 
Wyckliffe, of England, was arrested and tried ; the priests 
were afraid to execute him because when they proposed 
to do so an angry light came into the eye of the sturdy 
English people. John Calvin was driven out of France. 
But bold Martin Luther, in Germany, set the pope at de- 
fiance ; and when the emperor called on him to take back 
what he had said, he defied him too. And the emperor, 
looking at the crowds who stood at Luther's back, and 
who, as they listened to his brave words, had a way of 
fingering their sword-hilts, thought to himself that this 
was a good man to let alone. That is how the Reforma- 
tion, as it is called, took root in Germany. 

In France people were very much mixed. Most of the 
bright men of the day were on the side of the Reforma- 
tion ; the best and brightest woman — the king's sister. 
Marguerite — was heart and soul with Luther. The king 
shilly-shallied after his fashion. He was a churchman on 
Monday and a Protestant on Wednesday ; sometimes he 
changed his faith, like his shirt, every day. You never 
knew where to find him. But, on the whole, when a new 
and lovely lady came to court and smiled on him, he 
thought of nothing but her, and then the Church had its 
own way with the reformers. 

Thus Peter Leclerc, an old and wise priest who agreed 
with Luther, was burned alive with thirteen of his friends 
in the market-place of Meaux. Thus Louis Berquin, who 
had written a book in favor of the Reformation, was sen- 
tenced to have a hole burned in his tongue, and to be con- 
fined between four walls, without pen, ink, or paper, for 
the rest of his life ; a few days afterward the priests 
changed their mind, and he was burned alive. Thus John 
Leclerc, for tearing down the notice of the price at which 
the priests would sell indulgences to commit sin, was hor- 
ribly punished ; his right hand was cut off, his nose w^s 




TORTURES OF THE INQUISITION 

torn out, pinches of flesh were wrenched from his arms 
with hot pincers, a circlet of red-hot iron was bound round 
his head, and then his bleeding body was thrown upon the 
fagots and burned. And thus, in the year 1545, into the 
beautiful country of Vaud, where most of the people were 
Protestants, two cohmins of troops were marched, who 
sacked three towns and twentj^-two villages, massacred 
three thousand people, sent seven hundred to the galleys, 



178 [1515-1547 

sold the children and young girls for slaves, and put up a 
sign on leaving that no one under pain of death should 
give shelter or money or food to any Vaudian or other 
heretic. 

This was the beginning of the long struggle between 
the Church and the Reformation in France. For nearly 
a hundred years from the reign of Francis the First this 
history will be little else than a story of religious quarrels. 
It is a sad story. You might fancy that the good and 
wise Queen of Navarre saw what was coming when she 
wrote, on hearing of the persecution of the reformers after 
the death of Francis, 

" No father have I, no mother, 
Sister or brother, 
On God alone I now rely, 
Who raletli over earth and sky. 

world, I say good-by to you, 
To relatives, and friendly ties, 
To honors, and to wealth adieu, 

1 hold them all for enemies." 



Chapter XXIX 

DIANA OF POITIERS 
A.D. 1547-1559 

The crown of Francis the First fell at his death to his 
son, Henry the Second, a young man of twenty-eight, ro- 
bust, strong, and pleasant-mannered ; but the real king 
during his twelve years' reign was a woman. 

This was Diana of Poitiers, who was forty years old 
when Henry was crowned. Henry had married a lovely 
girl — Catherine of Medicis ; but he cared nothing for her, 
and let Diana rule him in everything. The queen grieved 
in secret at being neglected — so much that one of her 
friends, named Tavannes, offered to go and cut Diana's 
nose off. But in her youth Catherine was gentle — she was 
not so gentle afterward — and was afraid of an open rupt- 
ure with her husband's favorite ; so Diana kept her nose. 

There were at that time two great soldiers in the French 
army — the Constable Montmorency and the Duke of 
Guise. Of the latter and his family you will hear much 
more hereafter. The old chronic war breakino- out be- 
tween France and the Emperor Charles, these two led the 
French armies, and led them successfully, until the con- 
stable was beaten at Saint-Quentin and made prisoner. 
Then Guise came to the front alone. He made a sudden 
dash at Calais, which the English had held for two hun- 
dred years, and took it, in spite of the distich which the 
English had engraved on one of its gates : 

" When lead and iron swim hke wood, 
A siege of Calais may be good," 

When the emperor besieged the French at Metz — the 



180 [1547-1559 

very place where the Germans besieged Marshal Bazaine 
twenty-two years ago — Guise made so stout a defence 
that he drove his army off, broken and shattered. So now 
the French people began to think a great deal of the 
Duke of Guise. 

All this while the king was disporting himself with his 
lady friend at Paris. He did once take the command of 
bis troops, but he did not keep it long. He liked pleasure 
better than fighting. He and his courtiers played at being 
wandering knights, spent their life in riding through the 
woods, and made believe they were very much surprised 
when dinner-time came to find a splendid meal laid out for 
them in a rustic arbor which had been built for the pur- 
pose, with superb paintings on the walls and j^riceless 
ruo-s on the floors. Of course, I need not tell you that 
these sports cost a great deal of money, but Diana knew 
how to raise it. She sold all the offices, from judgeships to 
places in the royal kitchen, and when the money came in 
too slowly she created new offices in order to sell them. 
As for the bishoprics and abbeys, she kept a list of them 
and sold them before they were vacant. With the money 
thus raised she established the wickedest court in Europe 
— a court in which men and women boasted of being 
vile, and base, and wicked, and in which a great noble 
founded a body-guard called the " Brave and Bad," to 
which no one could be admitted unless he had committed 
some crime. 

King Henry enjoyed the gay life he led. On June 30th, 
1559, he gave a tournament, and to be polite his courtiers 
allowed him to roll them in the dust. But there came a 
rough and brutal Scotchman named Montgomery, who did 
not understand a joke ; he charged the king in downright 
earnest, and struck his visor so squarely with his lance that 
the lance broke, and a splinter went into the king's eye. 
He was taken from his horse, and his wound probed ; it 
was found that the splinter had gone into his brain. He 
died ten days afterward in terrible suffering. 



154Y-1559] 181 

The Reformation made progress during the reign, though 
the king and the Guises were opposed to it and had a 
number of Protestants burned. King Henry himself was 
a trifler, and did not care much whether the Protestants 
were persecuted or let alone. But when one of his best 
soldiers, Francis d'Anbelot, declared that he was on the 
side of the Reformation, the king threw a plate at his 
head and locked him up in jail. For all this, the best peo- 
ple in France, one by one, drifted over to the Protestant 
side. Two thousand Protestant churches were founded in 
France during the reign of Henry the Second. 



Chapter XXX 

THE GUISES 
A.D. 1559-1560 

The rule was when a King died, that his widow should 
put on the blackest mourning and sit in a dark room for 
forty days. But when Henry the Second died, his widow, 
Catherine of Medicis, had too much work on hand to 
waste forty days in crying over a man who in the first 
bloom of her youth and beauty had preferred to her a 
woman of forty. She sternly ordered Diana of Poitiers 
to return every jewel Henry had given her ; then she bade 
her be gone forever. 

Her son Francis the Second, who had succeeded to the 
throne, she had married to a lovely girl, of whom j^ou have 
heard, Mary Queen of Scots. He was sixteen, she fifteen ; 
the queen-mother had an idea of a nursery in which these 
two children were to play all day long, with herself as 
head nurse, managing the government for them. But she 
reckoned without the Guises — the fighting Duke of Guise 
and the smooth, cunning Cardinal of Guise. They said 
that so long as the king was a child it was their proper 
business to govern France, and above all things to crush 
the heretics — by which term they meant the Protestants, 
who in France began to be called Huguenots. The lead- 
ers of the Huguenots were the Prince of Conde, who was 
a dandy, and a great favorite with the ladies, and was 
jokingly called the pretty little man, though he was brave 
as steel and could fight to the death ; and the King of 
Navarre, who was a stupid person. Sometimes the Grand 
Constable Montmorency said that he was a Huguenot ; 
but most times he said he was a Catholic, though he hated 




AN EXECUTION AT AMBOISE 



the Guises, and they hated him from the bottom of their 
hearts. There was no one in France who was as cunning 
as the two Guises. There had been a law passed in King 
Henry's reign forbidding Protestant church services under 
pain of death ; this law the Guises resolved to carry out 
to the letter. First they got possession of the boy-king, 
his girl-wife — Mary Queen of Scots — aiding them with all 
her might, and the queen-mother not seeing her way to 
oppose them ; then they had Montmorency dismissed, took 
everything into their hands, and began to burn Protes- 
tants at a lively rate. As they were short of money, Car- 
dinal Guise stuck up a placard on the walls of the palace 
of Fontainebleau, wliere the boy-king was, in these words, 

" All persons coming here with bills, and demanding 
money, will be hanged." 

This, of course, enraged the king's creditors, and they 
plotted against the Guises, who were beginning to be 
hated. They were so much afraid that the people would 
fall upon them and make an end of them that they moved 
the boy-king to the strong castle of Amboise, and induced 
Catherine to appoint the Duke of Guise lieutenant-general 
of the kingdom, with power of life and death without 



184 



[1559-1560 



trial. Catherine submitted with a wry face, because she 
could not help herself. Then the Guises turned on the 
plotters and executed them without mercy. Hundreds 
were hung, beheaded, or drowned in the Loire. The exe- 
cutioners would fasten six or eight persons to a long pole, 
sink the pole to the river bottom, and keep it there till all 
were drowned. What seems most shocking was that these 
executions took place after dinner in front of the castle of 
Amboise, and that the duke and the cardinal took the boy- 
king, his girl-wife, and the ladies-in-waiting to the battle- 
ments to see the executions and listen to the shrieks of the 
dying. You will not be surprised to hear that a good and 
wise old man, the Chancellor Olivier, turned to Cardinal 
Guise and exclaimed, 




DUKE OF GUISE 



1559-1560] 185 

"Ah ! Cardinal, you are getting us all damned !" 

These cruel deeds and the impudence of the Guises at 
last gave Catherine the opportunity she had been waiting 
for. She said the executions shocked her, and she sus- 
pended the law condemning Protestants to death. She 
ordered that the Huguenots be allowed to pray after their 
own fashion, provided they did not plot against the king. 
The Guises took their revenge by accusing the Prince of 
Conde, the pretty little man, of high treason. He had a 
mock trial, was found guilty, and was sentenced to death. 
But before he could be executed, as he was sitting one day 
playing cards with his jailers, a servant stole into the 
room and whispered in his ear, 

"Our gentleman has croaked." 

It was true enough. On the 5th of December, 1560, an 
abscess had burst in the ear of the King of France, and the 
poor boy had died, leaving his kingdom to be fought for 
by his brother, his mother, the Guises, and the Protestant 
leaders. Wise men saw that rivers of blood would flow 
before France would once more have peace. 



Chapter XXXI 

CATHERINE OF MEDICIS 
A.D. 1560-1574 

Francis the Second was succeeded by his brother 
Charles, who became known as Charles the Ninth. He 
was then ten years old. Throughout his reign and the 
succeeding reign, the most powerful person in the king- 
dom was Catherine of Medicis, the king's mother. You 
remember her as the patient young wife of Henry the 
Second, who would not allow Tavannes to cut oif the nose 
of Diana of Poitiers ; and as the bustling queen-mother, 
who had no time to sit in the dark when she became a 
widow, because she had work to do which required 
light. When her husband died, she felt that her time had 
come. 

She was then forty-three years old, quite stout, with an 
olive complexion. She ate and drank a great deal, but 
kept herself well by riding or walking several hours a day. 
When Francis died she took Charles to sleep in her room, 
and for many years she never let him out of her sight. 
She received his visitors, opened his letters, never let his 
seal of state pass out of her hands, decided all public ques- 
tions for him, and saw to it that he was always amused. 
The Catholic Duke of Guise had proposed to her to go 
into partnership with him to manage the kingdom ; she 
pretended to be much struck by the idea, yet gave him no 
decided answer, but on the same day she invited his 
deadly foe, the Huguenot King of Navarre, to visit her 
secretly at midnight. You will understand her, if you 
bear in mind that she cared nothing for either religio'n. 
Her idea was to play the Protestants against the CathoUog 




CATHERINE DE MEDICI 

and to take sides with neither, but to keep power in her 
own hands. 

It was a hard task. The French were all wild on the 
subject of religion — the Huguenots insisting on their right 
to worship God in their own way ; the Catholics, Avho were 
the most numerous, insisting that there should be but one 
religion in the kingdom. Wherever the two met they 
fought, and the stronger of the two slaughtered the 
weaker. Battles raged almost every day. 



188 [iseo-isH 

The curate of St. Medard, at Paris, tried to drown the 
voice of a Huguenot preacher in a chapel near his church 
by ringing his bells clamorously ; a Huguenot who went to 
remonstrate was killed ; then the Huguenots burst into St. 
Medard, battered the priests, broke the crucifixes, smashed 
the statues, and drove out the Catholics howling. 

The Duke of Guise, at the head of two hundred troop- 
ers, fell upon a Huguenot congregation at Vassy in Cham- 
pagne, killed sixty, and wounded two hundred unarmed 
Protestants. At the news of the massacre Huguenots 
burst into fury everywhere, and you will not be surprised 
at it. When the duke passed men were heard to cry that 
they would willingly die if they could stick their dag- 
gers into his doublet. His life would not have })een 
worth a sou if Constable Montmorency had not protected 
him. 

The Huguenots, feeling that they must kill or be killed, 
took up arms, under the lead of the "pretty little man," 
who had not been executed after all, and old Admiral Co- 
ligni, who was a valiant captain and a gentleman of purest 
honor ; they seized Orleans, Rouen, and other cities. The 
Catholics under the Duke of Guise besieged them. Rouen 
fell, but Orleans held out as in the old days of Joan of Arc. 
Guise wrote to Queen Catherine that the town must be 
destroyed, and every living being in it killed, "even the 
cats." As it happened, neither the people nor even the 
cats met this fate ; but Guise, riding through his lines one 
dark night, was shot with a poisoned bullet, and there was 
an end of him. 

All this time Catherine went on coquetting with both 
factions. She told every one she was on the side of Guise, 
and had him with her constantly ; but at night she wrote 
sweet letters to the Huguenots, bidding them be of good 
cheer and to rely on her for help when the right time 
came. She always wanted to be on the winning side. 
When Guise was killed she believed the Huguenots would 
win, and in the king's name she issued an edict called the 



1560-1574] 



189 



Edict of Amboise, which gave the ProtestaDts leave to 
worship in their own way. 

This gave the country six years' peace. Then the war 
broke out again, and Catholics and Huguenots met in battle 
at Jarnac. A kick of a horse broke the pretty little man's 
leg, and one of the officers of the Duke of Anjou, who led 
the Catholics, and of whom you will hear more in the next 
chapter, shot him dead. His body was thrown on the 
back of an ass, wdth his head hanging down on one side 
and his feet on the other, and the soldiers threw mud on 
it as it jDassed. All these battles w^ere cruel and bloody ; 
not many prisoners were taken ; when people fight for re- 
ligion they have no mercy. 




CHARLES IX 




ADMIRAL COLIGNI 



When Charles was fourteen he was proclaimed king, 
and his mother Catherine pretended to give up her au- 
thority. She even started for Italy, where she was born. 
But her son was lost without her. He could not even 
write a letter unless she was at his elbow. He sent for 
her to come back. She came, and ruled France with a 
higher and a more iron hand than ever. The cunning 
woman now believed that the Catholics were going to win, 
and made up her mind to put out of the way the Hugue- 
not leader — the white-headed and gallant Admiral Coiigni 
— not that she had any fault to find with him, nor that she 
objected to Protestantism, but because she thought that he 
stood in her way, and that if he were dead the Huguenots 
would lose heart and cease from troubling. 

She conspired with the Duke of Guise, the son of the 
man who was shot at Orleans, and the two hired an assas- 




THE THREE COLIGNIB 



sin, who fired at the admiral as he was going home from 
the Louvre. The ball cut off two of his fingers, but did 
not kill him. Charles was, or pretended to be, so angry 
that his mother had to let him into the plot ; she persuad- 
ed him that his life was not safe so long as Coligni exist- 
ed. It was hard to convince Charles, but the poor, dull, 
muddled brain yielded at last, and he said, 

" By God's death ! since you think proper to kill the 
admiral, 1 consent, but all the Huguenots in Paris must 
die too. Give the orders at once." 

A guard had been set around the admiral's house, and at 
the head of it was au abominable cut- throat in the pay of 



192 [1560-15'74 

the Duke of Guise, whose name was Behm. Late that 
night — for the conspirators did not dare waste time, lest 
the king should change his mind — the cut-throat broke 
into the admiral's room, with a body of archers. The 
crippled veteran spi'ang out of bed, put on a dressing- 
gown, and leaned against the wall. Said Behm, 

"Art thou the admiral?" 

" Young man," replied Coligni, " thou comest against 
an aged and a wounded man. Thou'll not shorten my life 
much." 

The assassin thrust a boar spear into the admiral's stom- 
ach, then struck him with it on the head. The archers 
stabbed him as he lay. 

From the darkness of the courtyard, where archers' 
torches flashed a straggling light, the voice of the Duke 
of Guise rose, 

" Behm, hast done ?" 

" It is all over, my lord," was the answer, and the body 
of the old admiral was thrown out of the window and 
splashed the pavement with his blood. Guise approached 
it, turned it over with his foot, wiped the blood off the 
white hairs with his boot, gazed on the face by the light 
of a torch, and said exultingly, 

"Faith, it is he, sure enough." 

Then he rode off. Next morning at daybreak the church- 
bells at Paris began to ring the tocsin, and in every quar- 
ter Guise's friends appeared in arms. They had been told 
that it was the king's will that all Huguenots should be 
massacred, and they were thirsty for blood. The rabble 
of Paris eagerly joined in the devilish work, and, as the 
Catholics were four or five times as numerous as the Prot- 
estants, there was no resistance. How many poor Hugue- 
nots were slaughtered in cold blood in Paris and in other 
towns — for the killing was contagious — it is difficult to 
say, but four thousand dead bodies floated down the Seine. 
This shocking event is called in history the Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew^ because \t oQcuvred, on St, B^-rtholonaew's day. 




MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 



Wicked Catherine, who plotted the massacre, did not 
reap the reward she expected. Religious war broke out 
again with more fury than ever. The great seaport of La 
Rochelle revolted against the king and turned out his 
officers. He besieged, but could not take it, and after 
losing some of his best captains he had to raise the siege 
and sign the Edict of La Rochelle, which gave the Hugue- 
nots freedom to worship in their own way. Neither the 
duke nor the queen had made much by the floods of blood 

they had spilled. 
13 



194 [15C0-1574 

As for King Charles, he never forgave himself. His 
looks became sombre and downcast, and his head always 
drooped. He refused to drink wine or to eat anything 
but the plainest food. In order to tire himself, so as to 
get some sleep, he used to ride on horseback for twelve 
hours at a time. I am not surprised myself to read that 
he had visions, in which he saw dead men, lying stabbed 
on the floor by his side, and women, with blood flowing 
down their bosoms from gaping wounds, flying madly 
from the sight of him, with streaming hair and screaming 
children in their arms. He entreated his doctor, the great 
Ambroise Pare, who was himself a Huguenot, to find him 
some cure for these horrid visions ; he begged for rest, rest, 
rest, but the wise old physician shook his head. He knew 
that the king's ailment was not to be cured by medicine. 

He was not yet twenty-four years of age when he was 
attacked by an inflammation of the chest. He would not 
allow his mother near him, but to a faithful old nurse, who 
never left him, he moaned incessantly, 

" Oh ! nurse, nurse, what bloodshed and what murders ! 
What evil counsel liave I followed ! O my God, forgive 
me my sins, and have mercy on me ! I know not what 
hath come to me, so bewildered am I. What shall I do ? 
I am lost, lost !" 

In a day or two he died, in a fit of crying. Almost with 
his last words he rejoiced that his successor would not be 
a child, or one who could be misled by others. 



Chapter XXXII 

MORE WARS AND MURDERS 
A.D. 15V4-1589 

Henry the Third, brother and successor of Charles the 
Kinth, was out of France when his brother died. He re- 
turned, and rather surprised the French by walking bare- 
foot in a religious procession at Avignon, holding a crucifix 
and scourging himself with a whip. He was twenty-three 
years old. He had fought bravely enough in the relig- 
ious wars, but he was a fop. He used to rouge his cheeks 
and dye his hair ; he wore very expensive clothes of silver 
tissue, velvet, and satin, covered with lace and embroid- 
eries, and fringed with jewels and silver tags. Sometimes 
he masqueraded in woman's clothes. He laid down the 
most absurd rules of etiquette : no one could ajDproach him 
nearer than a certain fixed number of feet ; in the morning, 
when he awoke, a servant brought a glass of water and 
handed it to a courtier, who walked a few steps with it 
and then handed it to a prince of the blood, from whom 
alone the king was willing to receive it. It was not long 
before he showed that he was fonder of playing cup and 
ball, and other games, with idle favorites, than of attend- 
ing to his duties of kins;. He had seen so much wicked- 
ness going on under his brother's reign that you will not be 
surprised to hear that he accused his younger brother of try- 
ing to kill him by scratching his neck with a poisoned ring. 

This was not the man to make an end of the religious 
wars, which never ceased to rage and make life hideous 
for quiet people. Huguenots and Catholics would meet 
and fight until they were exhausted ; then they would 
agree to a truce for a few months or years ; when they re- 



196 [1574-1589 

covered breath, some killing of a Huguenot by a Catholic 
or of a Catholic by a Huguenot would rouse their blood, 
and the fighting would begin again. 

The Catholics formed a holy League to crush the Prot- 
estants and set at the head of it Henry of Guise, son of 
Duke Francis of Guise. In a battle Henry had been shot 
in the face ; the bullet had carried off part of one ear and 
dug a furrow along his cheek, from which he was called the 
Man with the Scar. The League put an army in the field 
and fought the Huguenots wherever they met them. In 
their turn the Huguenots put an army in the field and set 
at the head of it Henry of Navarre, one of the most glo- 
rious heroes who ever lived in France. Between the two, 
King Henry the Third was pulled now this way and now 
that ; he was a poor creature, who had no mind of his own, 
and his mother, Catherine, who was over sixty, fat and 
gouty, was not able to help him much. 

At Poitiers, when Henry of Navarre was near him, he 
agreed that the Huguenots should be let alone; at Paris, 
shortly afterward, when the Man with the Scar stood over 
him, with a scowl on his scarred face, he took it all back 
and ordered the persecution to go on. But under brave 
Henry of Navarre the Huguenots learned to fight. They 
met the king's army, Avhich was led by one of the king's 
chief favorites, at Coutras ; the Catholics were terribly 
beaten, the favorite being left dead on the field. The Hu- 
guenots might then, with the help of some German Prot- 
estants who had come to their assistance, have made an end 
of the League ; but Henry of Navarre, with all his noble 
qualities, had one great weakness : he never could resist a 
pretty face, and the beautiful Corisande of Grammont im- 
ploring him to visit her after his victory, he obeyed and 
lost his opportunity. While he was at the feet of pretty 
Corisande, Guise drove his army back and entered Paris. 

When he passed through the gate, he covered his face 
with his cloak j but the people quickly recognized him and 
shouted, 




HENRY III 



" Hurrah for Guise ! Hurrah for the pillar of the 
Church !" 

He went straight to the palace of Queen-mother Cath- 
erine, who lifted her fat body from her couch and grew 
very pale when he entered. She said, with a forced smile, 
that she was glad to see him, but that she would rather 
have seen him at any other time. He bade the old woman 
conduct him to the king. She was carried to her sedan- 
chair, and he walked beside her, bareheaded, in a white 
damask doublet, with a black cloak, and boots of buffalq- 



198 [15Y4-1589 

hide. The people shouted with joy to see him, women 
fluDg flowers on his head from the windows, and one girl 
pushed through the crowd and kissed him. He entered 
the Louvre, with head erect and proud face, through a 
double row of frowning archers, who were surprised to see 
him, and at length met the king face to face. 

Said Henry : " What brings you here ? I ordered you 
not to come." 

Said Guise : " I am here to offer your majesty my 
humble services." 

And he stalked out w^th his chin in the air. Then every 
one, and Catherine better than any other, knew that it was 
war to the death between these two, and that Guise meant 
to make himself king. 

A riot breaking out in Paris, the king could not put it 
down and had to humble himself and ask Guise to do so. 
Catherine called on him to thank him and asked him 
frankly, 

" Is it your intention to take the crown from my son's 
head ?" 

" Madame," replied the duke, " the medicine may be 
bitter, but it will do good." 

Next day King Henry, with a light cane in his hand, 
and a troop of tiny dogs of which he was strangely fond 
at his heels, walked to where a carriage was waiting and 
drove into the countrj^ leaving Paris in the hands of his 
enemy. Guise put his own people in all the strong places 
and filled the city with his troops. His sister, the Duch- 
ess of Montpensier, went about with a pair of golden 
scissors at her belt ; she had bought them, she said, to 
cut the king's hair off when he abdicated and became a 
monk. 

The king went to Blois, where that curious collection of 
noblemen, priests, and representatives of the people which 
the French called the States-General, and which we should 
call a congress, was about to assemble. There, as ill-luck 
w^ould have it. Guise followed him, For once — it was the 




MUKDEE, OF GUISE 



only time in his life — Henry made up his mind and stuck 
to his resolution. He sent for Crillon, who commanded 
the regiment of guards, and asked him, 

" Think you the Duke of Guise deserves death ?" 

"I do, sire." 

" Very well," answered the king ; " I choose you to give 
it to him." 



200 [1574-1589 

" I am ready," said the guardsman, " to challenge him." 

" That," said the king, " is not what I want. He must 
be struck down unexpectedly." 

" Sire," said Crillon, " I am a soldier, not an assassin." 

Others were not so scrupulous. The morning of the 
23d of December, 1588, was dark, cold, and dismal ; it was 
raining heavily. A royal council was to meet at seven, 
and the duke was to attend. Henry had filled the rooms 
round the council chamber with Gascon soldiers, who knew 
what they had been sent for and were ready for the work. 
He was pale and trembled all over. He went into his 
bedroom when Guise came in. The duke shivered a little 
from cold and asked a page to bring him some of the 
sugared plums he used to eat in the morning. Just then 
a messenger told him the king desired to see him. As he 
raised the tapestry which closed the king's chamber, five 
Gascons sprang upon him, stabbing him in the throat, 
chest, and side, with cries of " Die, traitor !" The duke 
had strength enough to drag them across the room, then 
fell dead before the bed, choked with his own blood. 

A door opened, and the quaking king thrust his pale 
face into the room, stammering, " Is it done ?" Seeing 
the dead body of the Man with the Scar before him, he 
plucked up courage enough to approach it and muttered, 

" How tall he is I He looks even taller than he did 
when he was alive !" 

On the day following the Cardinal of Guise was taken 
into a gallery where four soldiers stood with drawn swords 
and bidden to prepare for death. Pie made no reply, but 
knelt down with his face against the wall, and as he 
prayed a soldier drove his sword through his body. 

Henry made haste to tell his mother, now bedridden 
with her gout, what he had done. The grim old woman 
heard him out. 

" I hope," said she, " that the cutting is right. Now for 
the sewing." 

That did not concern her long. Thirteen days after- 
ward she was dead herself. 



15Y4-1589] 



201 



All the Catholics of France flew into a frenzy when they 
heard of the murder of the Duke of Guise. Madame de 
Montpensier, the sister of the dead man, led a procession 
through the streets of Paris, barefoot, in a loose robe, 
with her hair streaming over her shoulders, and screaming 
like a madwoman. Hundreds of ladies followed her lead. 
Crowds filled the streets, some singing dirges, some roaring 




ASSASSINATION OF HENRY III 

curses, all raging at the assassin. Men waved swords and 
pikes ; women gave their jewels to pay for troops. If 
King Henry the Third had appeared at that time in his 
own chief city his reign would not have lasted even for 
the short period which it was to endure. 

There was but one thing for him to do — and that was to 
throw himself upon the mercy of Henry of Navarre, the Hu- 



202 [isH-issg 

guenot leader. They met, by appointment, at Plessis les 
Tours — the king in shabby clothes and moving with a gait 
which was more slouching than ever ; Henry of Navarre 
gorgeous in olive-green velvet doublet, scarlet cloak, and 
white plume, smiling loftily, and stepping like a king. It 
did not take them long to make a treaty by which the 
Huguenots were to be free from persecution ; and then the 
two Henrys, with forty-two thousand men at their heels, 
marched on Paris, where the brother of the murdered 
Duke of Guise, Mayenne, was ruling as if he had been 
king. 

Henry of France lodged at a house at St. Cloud, from 
which he could see Paris and watch the fighting. At 
eight in the morning of August 1st, 1589, a servant told 
him that a monk wished to see him. He was a mean- 
looking Dominican, by name Jacques Clement, cadaverous, 
wild-eyed, and probably crazed by the religious wars of 
the period. Thb king accosted him pleasantly, saying, 
" Well, friend, what news from Paris ?" 

The monk handed him a letter and, while the king bent 
his head to read it, drew a long sharp knife from his 
sleeve and drove it into Henry's stomach so furiously that 
it stuck in the wound. The king pulled it out and cried, 

"The monk ! He has killed me !" 

Guards came running in and spitted the murderer with 
their swords as he stood against the wall with his arms 
outstretched. But it was too late to do anything for the 
king. He died next morning, having called upon his 
friends to support his successor. King Henry of Navarre. 




MEDAL OF HENRY IV. AND MARY OF MEDICIS 



Chapter XXXIII 

HENRY THE FOURTH 

A.D. 1589-1610 

Whex the news of the murder of Henrj'- the Third 
reached Paris, Madame de Montpensier, who never forgot 
nor forgave, mounted her carriage and drove furiously 
through the streets, like a madwoman, screaming, 

" Good news, friends, good news ! Henry the Third is 
dead and done for I" 

But neither she nor her friends the Leaguers were bet- 
ter disposed toward the Protestant Henry, who was sa- 
luted by his officers and the people round them as Henry 
the Fourth, than they had been toward Henry the Third. 
They swore that they would never, never, submit to be 
ruled by a heretic king. And the Duke of Mayenne, who 
was now the head of the Guise family and of the League, 
sallied forth, with much blowing of trumpets and flourish- 
ing of banners, to make an end of the Huguenots, which 
they said they were sure to do in two or three days, or at 
most a week. They were not so sure of that when Henry 
met them at Arques, and beat them soundly; and they were 
still more doubtful after he had met them at Ivry, at ten 
o'clock one morning, and sent them flying in every du'ec- 
tion before the noon-bell rang. It was at this last battle 



204 [1589-1610 

that Henry bade his soldiers, if they were confused in the 
fight, to look for his white plume and make for that, be- 
cause there the fight would be hottest. 

The Leaguers still held Paris, however, and there Henry 
besieged them. They had a large force of their own, and 
the King of Spain had sent an army to help them. Henry 
encircled the city with strong works, and pretty soon the 
provisions of the garrison began to fail. You remember 
that when Edward the Third of England besieged Calais, 
and the garrison turned out of the city the old men, the 
women and children, to make their provisions last the 
longer, cruel Edward let them die of hunger between his 
lines and the walls. Henry not only let the old men and 
women and children pass through his lines, but occasion- 
ally, when a convoy of bread or beef tried to get into the 
city, he pretended not to notice it, and it passed through. 
After the siege had lasted off and on for nearly four years, 
and the Leaguers were all quarrelling among themselves, 
the French quarrelling with the Spaniards, and Mayenne 
quarrelling with the citizens, a few of the more reasonable 
people concluded that it was time to end the agony, and 
sent word to Henry that they would let him in. 

The morning of March 22d, 1593, was dark and rainy. 
Henry started from St. Denis, with two divisions of his 
army, a little after midnight, and ploughed through the 
mud till five in the morning, when they reached the Gate 
of St. Denis and the New Gate, both of which were opened 
as they approached. The provost of the tradesmen hand- 
ed Henry the keys, and his troops marched through street 
after street without meeting any resistance ; they camped 
in the squares while he went to the Louvre. He would 
not allow a man to be harmed ; he even permitted the 
Spaniards to get away with bag and baggage. Other 
towns followed the example of Paris, and so Henry the 
Fourth got his kingdom at last. 

But Henry was too wise a man to believe that, in those 
days of bigotry, a Protestant king could rule peaceably 



1689-1610] 



205 



over a people four-fifths of wliom were Catholics. He 
saw that his becoming king would not end the religious 
war — that as soon as people had got over their exhaustion 
they would fall to fighting again. And it broke his heart 
to think that he should be the cause of endless warfare in 
his country. 




CHATEAU OF HENRY IV 



You can hardly fancy the frightful condition to which 
this strife between Catholic and Protestant had reduced 
France. Everybody went armed. Every one was sus- 
pected, and many a one was killed for fear he might mean 
to kill some one else. In the country, Avhen a stranger 
was seen coming along the road, householders got on the 
roofs of their houses to inspect him, and if they did not 



206 [1589-1610 

like his looks they shot him without asking questions. 
When a man paid a visit he left his gun and sword in the 
porch outside the door ; if he did not he ran some risk of 
being stabbed by a host who wanted to be on the safe 
side. Families were divided — father against son, broth- 
ers against brothers. And this had gone on for fifty 
years. 

Henry consulted the wisest men — Catholic and Protes- 
tant — and they agreed that, for the sake of his people, he 
ought to belong to the Church which most of his subjects 
preferred. It was a bitter struggle ; at first he scorned 
the idea of appearing to change his religion for the sake 
of becoming king ; he spent months in doubt ; but at last 
he decided to follow the advice of his counsellors. He 
drew an edict granting full freedom of worship to the 
Huguenots (it was known as the Edict of Nantes, and was 
not put in force till after the events I am now relating), 
then, on Sunday, July 25th, 1593, he went in great state 
to the Cathedral of St, Denis, where the Archbishop of 
Bourges, in flowing robe, with a mitre on his head and a 
crook in his hand, nine bishops, and a swarm of priests, 
stood at the grand entrance to receive him. 

Said the archbishop : "Who comes here?" 

Said Henry : " The King of France." 

" What does the King of France want?" asked the arch- 
bishop. 

" To be received into the bosom of the Church." 

"The King of France may enter." 

So the king went in, was duly baptized, and became a 
Catholic, so far as baptism and blessings could make him 
one. 
. I cannot describe to you the joy of the French people — 
Protestant and Catholic. They understood that this meant 
peace. A few Huguenots murmured, but when, afterward, 
they read the Edict of Nantes, which for nearly a hundred 
years was the charter of religious liberty in France, they 
made no more objection. The pope stormed and railed 



1589-^1610] 207 

and declared that he would never admit Henry into the 
Church ; but as Henry was in it already, with or without 
his leave, his wails did not impress people very much. 
The King of Spain, who was a besotted bigot, sent an army 
into France to punish Henry for doing that which Spain 
had always wanted him to do ; but he merely spent a great 
sum of money and wasted many lives without accomplish- 
ing anything. 

After a time the Duke of Mayenne begged Henry's par- 
don and became a dutiful subject ; the son of the Duke 
of Guise was glad to take an office under him ; even spite- 
ful Madame de Montpensier gave him her hand to kiss, 
witli a becoming blush. He was so manly and generous 
and genial, he had such winning ways, that no one could 
remain his enemy long. 

He was, however, in terrible straits for money. These 
wars cost vast sums ; the people were all poor and could 
not pay taxes. He was so poor himself that, when he had 
subdued all his enemies and was king without dispute, his 
shirts were all torn, his doublets out at elbows, his cup- 
board so bare that he had to go round among his friends to 
beg a dinner or a supper. He spent many sleepless nights 
planning how to raise money to carry on the government. 

All his life he had loved and had been loved by beauti- 
ful women. He married twice, each time unhappily. His 
first wife, the daughter of Catherine of Medicis, was an 
odious creature, who led so shameful a life that the king 
would not live with her and at last divorced her ; his sec- 
ond was another Medicis, of whom you will hear in the 
next chapter, and who was not by any means a nice per- 
son. You heard in the last chapter of pretty Corisande 
of Grammont, at whose feet Henry hastened to lay the 
first news of his victory at Coutras. After her, a lovely 
girl, with curly hair and soft blue eyes, whose name was 
Gabrielle d'Estrees, was for many years Henry's closest 
friend. She had a clear head as well as a tender heart ; 
he always sought her a<lvice in the trying times through 



208' [1589-1610 

which he passed, and she generally advised him well. 
Sometimes, as ladies will, she forgot herself, and Henry 
had to teach her that, much as he loved her, he was the 
master. Once she quarrelled with one of Henry's best 
friends and wanted to drive him from the court. When 
Henry heard of it he went to her with that ugly light in 
his eyes which his enemies had often seen in battle. 

"Madame," said he, "let me hear no more of this. I 
would have you to know your place. I would rather part 
with ten lady-friends like you than one man-friend like 
Rosny." 

She died suddenly, poor thing, and was supposed to have 
been poisoned. After her Henry chose Henriette d'En- 
tragues and Mademoiselle de Montmorenci to be his fa- 
vorites. His heart was so loving that he was lost if he 
had no woman to pet and tell his secrets to. But no one 
ever took in his heart the place which had been Gabri- 
elle's. 

You will not be surprised to hear that, in that age of 
wars and treacheries and murders, ruffians were found to 
try to assassinate this good king. He had scarcely got 
settled at Paris when a lad of nineteen, named John Chas- 
tel, attended one of his receptions and stabbed him in the 
face with a knife, without seriously injuring him. He con- 
fessed that the Jesuits, who had brought him up, had 
taught him that it was allowable to kill kings who were 
not approved by the pope. Chastel was put to death with 
horrible torments, and the Jesuits were expelled from 
Paris. Of course you know that at the present day the 
Jesuits do not teach any brutal nonsense of that kind. 

A number of other attempts were made on Henry's life, 
but he scorned to take precautions and laughed at the 
idea of his dying by murder. It was not till his wife, 
Mary of Medicis, insisted on being crowned in great state 
that a curious presentiment came over him. He said to 
bis counsellor Sully, 

^'I shall 4ie in this city and shall never go out of it, 




HENRY IV. OF FRANCE 



1589-1610] 211 

They will kill me ; my enemies have no remedy but my 
death." 

And for a long time he steadfastly refused to attend the 
coronation, greatly to the queen's chagrin. He told her, 

"I have been told that 1 was to be killed at the first 
grand ceremony I undertook, and that I would die in a 
carriage." 

The queen still persisted and teased him so constantly 
that he, who could refuse nothing to a woman, finally con- 
sented to go. 

His carriage was being driven along the street of La 
Ferronnerie, when a cart got in the way and forced the 
driver to slack up, and to draw close to the shop of an 
ironmonger. In the doorway stood a man who, as the 
carriage slackened its speed, sprang upon the step and 
struck the king twice with a knife, the last thrust entering 
his body between the fifth and sixth ribs and making a 
deep hole. Henry uttered a low cry ; one of the gentle- 
men, who had not noticed the assassin, asked, 

"What is it, sire?" 

The king answered in a faint voice, " It is nothing," and 
spoke no more. They carried him to the Louvre and laid 
him on his bed ; he remained speechless and insensible for 
two days and then died. 

Fran9ois Ravaillac, the murderer, was a madman who 
had gone crazy on the subject of religion. He was torn 
in pieces by wild horses for his crime. But even that hor- 
rible death did not expiate his murder of the wisest, and 
bravest, and gentlest, and noblest king France ever had. 




CARDI^IAL KICHELIEU 



Chapter XXXIV 

CARDINAL RICHELIEU 
A.D. 1610-1643 

Two or three minutes after King Henry the Fourth ex- 
pired the royal chancellor entered the room of Mary of 
Medicis. She read his face and, springing to her feet, cried, 

" Is the king dead ?" 

" Madame," answered the chancellor, "the king can never 
die. Here is the king." 

And he laid his hand on the head of her son Louis, who 
was a boy nine years old. He was known as Louis the 
Thirteenth. 

When Mary of Medicis married Henry she was twenty- 
seven years old — tall, fat, with staring eyes and a forbid- 
ding air. Henry never loved her and never trusted her. 
When he died she was thirty-seven — vain, ol)stinate, vin- 
dictive, and suspicious. She did not care for her son, 
whose education she neglected, and whom she allowed to 
spend his time in playing tennis and billiards, setting bird- 
traps, and painting little pictures on scraps of paper. 
When he was fifteen she married him to Anne of Austria, 
a Spanish princess, who was also fifteen, pretty and grace- 



1610-1643] 213 

ful, with blue eyes and a quantity of light hair. The two 
children seemed to take a fancy to each other, though the 
little queen could hardly move in her heavy green satin 
dress embroidered with gold, and was glad to get it off 
and play at romps with her boy-husband. 

Mary of Medicis, the queen-mother, kept the business of 
government in her own hands, and to advise her she took 
into her employment the ablest statesman you have read 
of in this history — Richelieu. 

You may be surprised to hear that he was a bishop 
when he was twenty, but in those days bishoprics were 
property which could be handed down from father to son 
or from brother to brother, like a field or a watch. He 
was so poor when he was created a bishop that he had to 
buy a second-hand bed to sleep on, and made himself a 
muff out of a fur belonging to his uncle. But if he was 
poor in money he was rich in brains, as you will see. 

The queen-mother had brought from Italy a woman she 
liked, Leonora Galigai, and her husband Concini, and had 
loaded them with riches, titles, and honors. She had cre- 
ated Concini, who was a very common person, a marquis ; 
and, as you may suppose, the French grew jealous of him. 
He was a foolish talker, and some of his boastful speeches 
were reported to the king and angered him. One day the 
Italian kept his hat on in the king's presence — this was the 
straw which broke the camel's back. No one who kept his 
hat on before the king was fit to live. 

On the 24th of April, 1617, the captain of the King's 
Guard bade a few trusty men put pistols in their pockets 
when they went on guard. When the Italian marquis 
made his appearance the captain stepped up to him and 
said, 

'' I have the king's orders to arrest you." 

" What ! arrest me ?" cried the marquis, clapping his 
hand to his sword. 

At that four or five guardsmep ^re4 their pistols at him, 
md he fell dead, 



214 [1610-1643 

Everybody said that this would be bad for Richelieu, 
who had been a close friend of the dead man ; but, strange 
to say, it turned out that he was a still closer friend of the 
man who succeeded Concini in his offices — De Luynes. At 
this time it took a pretty sharp observer to keep track of 
Richelieu's friendships and his enmities. 

The queen-motlier was furious at her favorite's death, 
and went to the country, taking Richelieu with her. For 
quite a long time mother and son were foes and never 
met ; but at last Richelieu reconciled them, and to reward 
him the king got the pope to make him a cardinal and 
took him into his own service. From that time he ruled 
France, and ruled it wisely and well. 

It would weary you to read the story of the cunning 
tricks by which he managed to outwit the enemies of 
France, and set them all fighting one against the other, so 
that at the end of the fighting France was more powerful 
than any of them. Though he was a cardinal of the Church, 
more than once in Germany he took the side of the Protes- 
tants against the Catholics, the better to weaken both. 
And at home, while he captured the great Protestant town 
of La Rochelle from the Huguenots, after a siege in which 
hundreds of men, women, and children died of hunger, he 
was quite fair in dealing with the Huguenot party, allow- 
ing no man to be persecuted because of his religion. In 
this way he made France a peaceful country, in which 
every one could attend to his own business, and pray in 
the church he liked best, without troubling himself about 
what his neighbor believed, or how or where he prayed. 
Richelieu had no money troubles. With the help of his 
wise minister. Sully, Henry the Fourth had left a large 
sum of money in the treasury when he died. Richelieu in- 
creased it, though the people made no complaint of being 
over-taxed. 

But, as you may suppose, he could not do all these 
things without making enemies. One of them was the 
young queen, Anne, who turned out a flirt, and was always 



1610-1 G43] 215 

coquetting with the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of 
Orleans, who was her husband's brother, or some one else. 
The cardinal watched her closely; she found it out and 
vowed vengeance. From that time plot succeeded plot, 
and it required all the cardinal's wit and skill to defeat 
them. 

The Duke of Orleans planned to murder the cardinal in 
his own palace. The deed was to be done in the night. 
Shortly before midnight a party of the duke's men-at-arms 
knocked loudly at the cardinal's door. It was opened, and, 
of all unexpected persons, the cardinal himself stepped out, 
serene and calm. 

" Ha !" said he, with a wave of his laced wristband, 
" the duke deigns to pay me a visit. I will go meet 
him." 

And stepi^ing into a carriage, he drove off like the wind, 
leaving the assassins staring at each other. 

When the duke awoke next morning, you may fancy his 
surprise when he saw the cardinal standing by his bedside, 
handing him his shirt. 

" Your royal highness's men," said he with a smile, " did 
not find the beast in his lair." 

One of the conspirators in this plot — Chalais — was 
caught and condemned to death. To prolong his life, his 
friends gave the executioner a large sum of money to go 
away; but another executioner was procured, who did not 
know his business, and who choj^ped thirty-one times at 
the poor fellow's neck before he succeeded in cutting his 
head off. 

The cardinal knew that Queen Anne was in the plot, 
but for the present he was content with a mild punishment. 
He introduced to her a new envoy from the pope, of the 
name of Mazarin ; you will hear more of him by and by. 
" Madame," said Richelieu, with a bow and a smile, " you 
will doubtless approve of him, he is so like the late Duke 
of Buckingham." 

The old queen-mother quarrelled with the cardinal be- 



216 [1610-164S 

cause he would not consult her about the business of state. 
She did not do her plotting in secret, as her daughter-in- 
law did, but went round everywhere howling that Riche- 
lieu was a knave and a liar and a crocodile, and that he 
ought to have his head taken off before supper. The car- 
dinal pretended to be very much distressed at having lost 
the favor of his good, kind friend Madame Mary of Med- 
icis, but he went on governing the country all the same; 
and the king, who did not know much, still knew enough, 
at that time, to choose rightly between his mother and the 
cardinal. Queen Mary went off boiling with spite and mut- 
tering that God would repay, though he did not pay every 
week. 

Richelieu was satisfied that Queen Anne was secretly 
writing letters to her brothers in Spain, though Spain and 
France were at war at the time ; his spies had convinced 
him of that, but he could not get hold of the letters. Sud- 
denly, without any warning, he arrested her confidential 
valet, La Porte, and shut him up in the Bastile. It chanced 
that Anne had among her maids of honor a beautiful girl 
named Marie d'Hautefort, who was so charming that when 
she was only fourteen the king himself had fallen in love 
with her, and had pursued her with calf-love until she had 
pluckily told him he did not please her at all. This Marie, 
who was as brave as she was pretty, now went to the Bas- 
tile in the dress of a servant, and found that La Porte was 
in one of the lowest dungeons of the prison, and that two 
stories above him a young nobleman of her acquaintance, 
named De Jars, was also locked up. She got admission to 
De Jars, and gave him a paper on which was written, 

" The queen is in danger. Do not betray her." 

De Jars broke a hole in the floor of his cell and passed 
the paper to the prisoner below him, and he, being a friend 
of De Jars, broke a hole in his floor likewise and lowered 
the note down to La Porte. 

Whereby it came that when La Porte was examined, he 
declared on his honor that he had never carried any let- 



1610-1643] 217 

ters from the queen to the envoys of Spain, had never re- 
ceived any from them, and could swear that no letters had 
ever passed between them and the queen. If it had been 
necessary, he would have sworn that the queen had never 
written any letters to anybody and that she didn't know 
how to \vrite. The cardinal, taking a pinch of snuff and 
settling his scarlet velvet gown around him, remarked with 
a sigh, " I wish I could get as faithful a servant as that." 

Another friend of the queen's, who probably knew all 
about the letters to Spain, was the Duchess of Chevreiise. 
The cardinal locked her up in a castle. One day, as she 
was driving through the grounds, she managed in the car- 
riage to slip off her clothes, and put on the doublet, hose, 
boots, and wig of a man; then, with a sword by her side, 
she leaped from the carriage, ran to a place where a horse 
stood saddled and bridled, and rode to Bayonne. A gen- 
tleman who met her said as she passed, 

*' If you were not dressed as a cavalier, I should say you 
were the Duchess of Chevreuse." 

"I have the honor," said the pretended cavalier, laugh- 
ing, "to be related to that lady"; and putting spurs to her 
horse, she did not draw bridle till she stood on Spanish soil. 

These narrow escapes so frightened Queen Anne that 
she sent for Richelieu and confessed. The poor little 
womauj trembling all over, and sobbing and crying, knelt 
at the feet of the great cardinal, who, in his scarlet robe, 
with his lace collar, his diamond star, and his lofty smile 
looked like a king. He knew how weak this woman was. 
He patted her on the back as a father might. 

" Madame," said he, " let the past be forgotten. But 
conspire no more with Spain against your country." 

She swore by her crucifix that she would not, and then 
she went on conspiring just as before. The cardinal knew 
that she would, and he bought her servants, and read every 
letter she wrote, and knew of every plot she made as soon 
as it was formed. 

Meantime her husband wm mcgwstaut as a weathercock, 



218 [1610-1643 

Sometimes he declared that he would not be king if he 
had not the cardinal to advise him. Then again he would 
wring his hands and whine, ^' Will nobody rid me of this 
terrible priest ?" 

Richelieu felt that he was not safe unless he had a faith- 
ful friend near the king's person. For that work he chose 
a handsome, dashing young fellow named Cinq-Mars. The 
two young men became fast friends. Cinq-Mars taught 
Louis how to catch magpies and how to train dogs ; they 
carved wooden toys together, and sometimes they went 
into the royal kitchen and made candy, under the direction 
of the royal cook. The king grew as fond of the young 
man as a boy is of his sweetheart; he made him a member 
of his privy council. This was too much for the cardinal. 
He required the king to revoke the appointment. Then 
Cinq-Mars, like the others, began to plot against the man 
who had made him. 

If he had been wise, he would have taken warning by 
the end of Mary of Medicis. That terrible old w^oman had 
gone too far at last, and the knave and crocodile had turned 
upon her and sent her into exile in Germany. Neither 
England nor Holland nor Spain dared receive her. By 
the cardinal's advice her son Louis broke with her and re- 
fused to send her money. There were times when she had 
not a meal a day, nor money to buy firewood to keep her 
warm. She chopped up her table and chairs to make a 
fire. When the end came, she told her confessor that she 
forgave her enemies ; but when he advised her to send a 
ring to Richelieu in token of forgiveness, she answered, 
" That is too much," and turned her face to the wall and 
died. 

The other queen, Anne, had learned her lesson at last, 
and would have nothing to do with Cinq-Mars and his 
plots ; but the Duke of Orleans and other revengeful court- 
iers begged to be counted in. In the old way, they made 
a treacherous treaty with Spain, and, likewise in the old 
way, the cardinal fouw4 it out and got a copy of the treaty, 



1610-1643] 219 

which he sent to the king. Cinq-Mars soon received word 
that he had been found out. He hastened to the kins:, but 
Louis would not see him. " His soul," said the kinjr, hold- 
ing up a frying-pan in which he was making candy, " is - 

as black as the bottom of this pan." 

So he was arrested, tried, and convicted of high treason, 
as also w^as his friend De Thou. He was sentenced to be 
put to the torture, but just as he was taking off his doublet 
an order came from the cardinal to leave out this part of 
the sentence. He stepped with firm tread to the courtyard 
of the castle of Pierre Encise, and refused to have his eyes 
bandaged. Seeing the block, he marched silently to it, 
threw off his cloak, knelt down, and bent his neck to the 
headsman, who, with a single blow of his axe, put an end 
to his life. He was just twenty-two years of age, and the 
darling of the fair ladies of the court. 

" Now," said the cardinal to the king, " I think your 
majesty will have peace." 

Louis sighed and made no answer. Both he and the 
cardinal had had warnings that a life of turmoil is seldom 
long. Richelieu was very ill ; at times his pains seemed 
more than he could bear. He took great care of himself. 
When he travelled he went by water, if he could, in a 
splendid barge, which was escorted by a fleet of small 
boats full of priests, physicians, men-at-arms, servants, 
and wine, rich food, and delicacies ; on each shore a squad- 
ron of cavalry escorted the barge. When he could not 
travel by water he was carried in a litter, which was borne 
by twelve gentlemen of his guard, who marched bare- 
headed. It was covered with damask, and was so large 
that, besides the cardinal, it contained a bed, a couch, a 
table, a mirror, and a chair for his secretary. When it 
came to a walled lane which was too narrow to let it pass, 
the walls were broken down ; and where it had to be taken 
into a house, it did not enter by the door, but a hole was 
broken in the wall, and the litter was hauled up an inclined 
plane with ropes. 



220 ■ [1610-1543 

When the cardinal reached Paris, after the trial of Cinq- 
Mars, he was very ill indeed. He sent for the king and 
took his leave of him. 

" Sire," said the dying man, " I bid you adieu forever 
in this world. I leave you a kingdom more powerful than 
ever. To retain it you have only to choose your council- 
lors wisely." 

The king left the death-bed and strolled through the 
cardinal's picture-gallery, making remarks about the pict- 
ures. A doctor arriving, the cardinal asked him, 

*' How long have I to live? Tell me the plain truth." 

" Monsignor," answered the physician, "in twenty-four 
hours you will be dead or cured." 

He died next day at noon. Word was sent to the king, 
who quietly observed, 

" He was a great politician." 

Four months afterward Louis lay dying himself. " I 
am soon going," he said, "to lay m}^ bones in St. Denis. 
It will be a hard journey, for the roads are bad." He 
grew peevish. His bedroom was full of courtiers who came 
to ask after his health. They annoyed him, as you might 
imagine. He said, 

" These gentry come to see how I shall die. If I should 
get better, I will make them repent their curiosity." 

His wife Anne, who was true and tender to him at the 
last, never left him. When the doctor said, "I can feel 
no more pulse," she clasped her arms round him, and thus, 
at the age of forty-two, on May 14th, 1643, he breathed 
his last, with his head on her breast. 

He had been King of France for thirty-three years. But, 
if it had not been his good fortune to have a minister like 
Richelieu, you would have had no more reason to remem- 
ber him than you have to recall the names of the feeble 
and worthless kings whose story I have told you. Under 
Richelieu, France became the greatest power in Europe, 
and this was due to his wisdom, his boldness, and his pru- 
dence. But he had no idea of liberty ; it never occurred 




LAST MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL 



to him that no nation can be really great unless it be al«o 
free. 

From the beginning of history the French had taken a 
small share in governing themselves through the States- 
General, in which the nobles, the clergy, and the people 
were represented ; and besides this, each province had a 



222 [1610-1643 

parliament, which chiefly occupied itself with lawsuits. 
These were not very formidable bodies when they were 
opposed to the king ; but, such as they were, they kept 
alive the idea of freedom. Cardinal Richelieu crushed 
them out of existence. He took all power into his own 
hands, and scoffed at the idea of sharing it with any one. 
I make no doubt that in so acting he paved the way for 
the explosion which came a hundred and fifty years after 
his time. If he had left the French some show of liberty, 
perhaps they might not have been so rabid to grasp the 
reality, and to avenge themselves on those who had so long 
kept them out of their own. 

When you think of him, you must give him credit for 
having used his power to encourage French letters, sci- 
ence, and art. Before him France lagged behind other 
nations. Italy had long before produced books which you 
may read with pleasure to-day ; Spain had given birth to 
Cervantes and Lope de Vega ; Shakespeare's plays were 
being performed in London when Richelieu was a little boy. 
While France was devoted to religious wars, nothing else 
was thought of. When peace came, through the Edict of 
Nantes, poets, philosophers, and men of science arose. 
Richelieu encouraged them all. 

He founded the French Academy, which is in full vigor 
to-day, and has counted among its members the greatest 
writers in France. He established the Garden of Plants, 
which contains to-day, as it has always contained, the largest 
collection of beasts, birds, reptiles, and plants in the world. 
He rebuilt the Sorbonne, the great school where the science 
of the human mind was studied. He founded the Royal 
Printing-ofiice. He encouraged the Society of the Hotel 
Rambouillet, which counted among its members all who 
were witty and wise in France. Under him Corneille, 
Ronsard, and Malherbe began to create French poetrj^, 
and Pascal and Descartes taught the French how to write 
prose. Before the time of Richelieu, the deepest thinkers 
of the day, such as Erasmus and Bacon, wa'ote in Latin. 




THE HOLY CHAPEL AT PARIS 



Montaigne, Calvin, Rabelais, Amyot, and other Huguenots 
set the example of writing in French. Richelieu encour- 
aged the practice, and it was under him that the French 
language first became what it is — a language v/hich you 
will love the more the better you understand it. 

When you weigh the cardinal in the balance, you must 
offset his treason to liberty with his great services to the 
cause of human knowledge, 



Chapter XXXY 

CARDINAL MAZARIN 

A.D. 1613-1651 

At the death of Louis the Thirteenth, his widow, Anne 
of Austria, became regent, and chose for her chief coun- 
sellor the Italian Cardinal Mazarin, rather to the chagrin 
of the proud French nobles, the Duke of Orleans and the 
Prince of Conde. She took her little son, who was a fair- 
haired, handsome boy of four, to the Parliament of Paris, 
and the child, standing on a stool, bowed his little head, 
and gave the members of the parliament his little hand to 
kiss. 

At first all went smoothly, but before long disputes 
arose between Mazarin and the parliament on the subject 
of taxes. France was carrying on expensive wars in Ger- 
many and Spain, and the cardinal had to provide money, 
which he could onl}^ do by laying fresh taxes ; the people 
refused to pay the taxes, and in some places broke out in 
revolt. The rioters were called frondeurs, or slingers, from 
the frondes, or slings, which Paris boys used in their street 
squabbles. They had the parliament on their side, with 
old, bald-headed, long-bearded Matthieu Mole, who was as 
bold as a lion, at its head, and among its leaders an in- 
trepid member named Broussel. When the regent sent 
orders to the parliament to do this and do that, Broussel 
declared flatly that he would not obey them. 

That afternoon, as he was quietly dining with his son 
and daughter in his house, in a narrow street near the 
Seine, the lieutenant of the guard and a body of soldiers 
broke in, seized him, and carried him off. An old woman 
who kept Broussel's house rushed to the window^ crying, 



1643-1651J 227 

" Help ! Help ! Rescue the father of the people ! 
Help !" 

Every man threw down his tools and ran toward the 
Palais Royal. By the time they got there they were such 
a crowd that the Swiss troops let them break their ranks, 
and the palace was surrounded by a surging mass of peo- 
ple shouting, 

" Give us Broussel ! We must have Broussel !" 

Anne, at whose side stood Mazarin, declared with set 
teeth and scornful eyes that she would never give him up 
— never, never ! 

"Then, madame," said Marshal Meilleraye, "by to-mor- 
row there wall not be a stone left of all the buildings in 
Paris." 

That night twelve hundred barricades arose in the streets 
of Paris, one of them within a hundred yards of the Palais 
Royal. Still Anne held out. It was not till Matthieu 
Mole took her by the hand, showed her her little son play< 
ing in the courtyard, and said, "That child is losing hia 
crown," that she burst into tears and flounced into her 
room. Then Mazarin issued an order for the release of 
Broussel. Paris went wild when he appeared in the streets ; 
he was hoisted on men's shoulders, and carried round 
through crowds, which threw up their hats and shouted 
"Broussel ! Broussel ! welcome back !" 

This was the first victory of the people over the throne ; 
you will hear of more such before you finish this book. 

For the time the storm was over. But the square-caps, 
as the members of the parliament were called, did not love 
the cardinal any the more for their victory, and the proud 
nobles, the Prince of Conde and the Duke of Orleans, hated 
him worse than ever. The Prince of Conde wrote him a 
letter, in which he addressed him as " most worshipful 
flunky," and the people hooted him when he appeared in 
the streets. After a time Anne and he grew^ tired of this 
treatment, and secretly slipped out of Paris by night with 
the boy-king. 



228 [1643-1651 

They fled to St. Germain, where the palace was very- 
grand, but as there were no sashes in the windows, they 
were boarded up ; there was no firewood, there were no 
bedsteads, so that even the ladies had to sleep on mat- 
tresses on the floor, and the rats were so numerous that 
they had to send back to Paris for cats. The Prince of 
Conde, who was at St. Germain, threatened to besiege 
Paris. In order not to be behindhand with him the fron- 
deurs took the Bastile. 

Then followed a number of skirmishes, which had no 
result except to cost the lives of people who cared little 
either for the cardinal or for the Fronde and to stop all 
business in Paris. This led to sober thought, and after a 
time the people, who wanted no more wars, invited the 
queen to come back. She came, and Mazarin got back to 
power, though the boys of Paris still shouted, when they 
saw him in the street, 

" Down with Mazarin ! Down with Mazarin, the Italian 
cardinal !" 

Seven figures, stuffed with straw, and in cardinal's robes, 
were hung to lamp-posts, and two oil paintings, nailed on 
one of the bridges, showed the Italian with a rope round 
his neck, and a list of his crimes written out underneath. 

The vindictive Italian struck at his enemies by impris- 
onino; the Prince of Conde and the Duke of Lonoueville. 
At this the quarrel burst out as fiercely as ever; the par- 
liament passed a vote that Mazarin should be sent into 
exile, and he, feigning to submit, left Paris and went to 
Brussels. The people imagined that the queen had gone 
with him and had taken the king with her. They broke 
into the Palais Royal, and a mob of ragamufiins forced 
their way into the splendid bedchamber where the boy- 
king slept, under gorgeous curtains and with tall mirrors 
on every side. There they saw^ him soundly sleeping on 
his pillow, and they went out on tiptoe. Then the people 
went home and slept soundly too, feeling that the cardini^l 
>yas gone, and tb^t the king was not, 



1643-1651] 



229 



The sleep was followed by a sharp awakening. Mazarin 
came back. The parliament offered a reward of a hun- 
dred thousand crowns for his capture, dead or alive. He 
captured his would-be captors and put them in jail. He 
came leisurely on to Paris ; the queen and her son went 
to meet him and escort him to his palace ; the parliament 
gave up the struggle against hi:n ; he took charge of the 
government as before, and held "■ ill he died of gout, on 
March 9th, 1661, at the age of tUy-nine. He had been 
eighteen years in power, and had made so much money 
that his income was lara^er than the kino^'s. 




BABKICADES AT PORTE ST. AMTOINE liS THE CIVIL WAR OF TUE 

FRONDE 




LOUIS XIV 



Chapter XXXVI 

LOUIS THE I'OURTEENTH 
A.D, 1651-1680 

At daybreak on the morning of the Vth of September, 
1651, the cannon of the Bastile, the Arsenal, and the forts 
round Paris began to thunder ; at eight, Queen Anne, with 
the members of the royal family and of the court, entered 
the chamber of Louis the Fourteenth, to congratulate him 
on his coming of age. The boy was but fourteen, but he 
was grave as he leaned on the brass rail of his bed to re- 



1651-1680] 231 

ceive them ; he would have been handsome if his face had 
not been scarred by small-pox. He walked through a lane 
of noblemen and soldiers to the street, mounted his horse, 
and, after stopping on the way to hear mass, rode to the 
Parliament Chamber. There he informed the members 
that he intended to take the government into his own 
hands, and that he would acquaint them with his pleasure. 
This, from a boy of fourteen, would in our time be regarded 
as bold. But the French found no fault with it. 

They did not like it so well when Louis again appeared 
before the parliament some months later, informed them 
that they were not to meet again, and then stepped out, 
without waiting for an answer. But they made no sign. 

From his early youth Louis was lord of all he surveyed. 
When he was asked who would be his prime minister after 
Mazarin, he answered, "I will be my own minister." When 
some one spoke of the state, he sneered, "I am the state." 
He regulated his life by strict rules. He got up at eight. 
While his valets were dressing him, and combing the mon- 
strous wig which he wore to make himself look taller, the 
best and bravest and brightest people in France were ad- 
mitted to his room to tell him the news, to fawn upon him, 
to flatter him, and liken him to the heroes of ancient his- 
tory. At ten he attended a council ; at noon he heard 
mass ; at one he dined, always alone, and dukes and mar- 
quises and barons waited on his table. It happened one 
day, as he was sitting down to table, that the great Mo- 
liere, whose comedies are still famous, was in the room. 
Moliere had been snubbed by the courtiers. To give them 
a lesson, the king begged him to sit down, and helped him 
to a chicken-wing. The court almost went into convul- 
sions ; one great lord nearly fainted on the spot. 

In the evening Louis supped with the ladies of the fam- 
ily and his court, and they had a merry time. At the 
council of state he was stifi" and dignified ; he took his seat 
majestically ; the ministers did not dare to sit down, but 
stood round the table. But with fair raarouises and count- 



232 [1651-16S0 

esses around him, he could simper and smile and flirt. 
You would not think to-dsij that his company was very 
choice. The ladies wore their hair combed back from their 
foreheads, and powdered ; their heads were hidden under 
hats like diadems, and their hoops swung to and fro when 
they walked. They were so bold that they looked like 
boys in disguise, and sometimes they talked like very rude 
boys. The men wore pigtails, powder, and patches ; from 
their wristbands and the knees of their breeches hung long 
lace frills. If the ladies looked like boys, the gentlemen 
looked like girls at a masquerade. 

The best people in France crouched at the king's feet. 
A smile from him made them happy ; a frown plunged 
them into despair. They worshipped him, toadied to him, 
basked in the light of his eyes. The greatest men in the 
kingdom, thinkers who were famous, poets whose verses 
were in every one's mouth, soldiers who had won battles, 
nobles whose ancestors had been at the Crusades, fought 
with each other for^the honor of holding the king's candle 
when valets took oif his clothes at bed-time. When he 
was in bed, the haughtiest dames and the fairest girls in 
France sat at his bedside reading to him. All were splen- 
didly dressed and beautifully mannered. Everybody spent 
money like water. Carriages had come into use in Paris 
with Henry the Fourth. That valiant soldier, who rode 
into battle with a smile, never dared ride in one, for fear of 
being upset. But under Louis the Fourteenth rich people 
kept gorgeous carriages, and drove prancing horses with 
golden harness through the streets, which, as there were no 
sidewalks, was not pleasant for people who were on foot. 

In the year 1660, when Louis was twenty-two, he mar- 
ried Maria Theresa of Spain. She was rather good-look- 
ing, though short ; her teeth were bad — there were no 
dentists in those days — her hair was fair, her eyes blue, 
and her complexion perfect. The Spanish fashions of that 
day were queer. Maria Theresa wore at her betrothal a 
white dress with heavy gold ornaments and a huge white 



1651-1680] 233 

cap, while her ladies in waiting wore low dresses which 
showed their skinny necks ; they had quantities of false 
hair, and enormous hoops which wobbled as they walked. 

The poor queen did not have a happy life. Louis treated 
her coldly and neglected her for other ladies ; her jealousy 
affected her mind, so that she became half-witted. She 
lived, however, twenty-three years as Queen of France, and 
when she died she begged her husband with her last breath 
to marry Madame de Maintenon. This was a lady of fifty, 
who had been married in her youth to a cripple, and had 
outlived him. She possessed uncommon judgment and 
tact, and had completely mastered the king by devoting 
herself to his service and never annoying him by jeal- 
ousy. Louis married her, as his wife had bidden him ; but 
the marriage was kept a secret, and Madame de Maintenon 
never took the title of queen. She did not make much by 
her grand marriage. For thirty years she was the slave 
and nurse of a crabbed, selfish tyrant, who was always 
either flirting with young girls, or sitting silent and morose 
in his arm-chair, or whining for medicines for some new 
ailment. When Louis died, she went to live at a country 
place, and was as soon forgotten as if she had never been 
mistress of France. 

Louis had not been long on the throne before he began 
to yearn for glory. He dreamed of blood and battles 
and triumphal marches and plains strewed with the dead. 
It probably never occurred to him that war would waste 
the lives and the substance of his people. Indeed, I fancy 
he never thought of his people at all. He wanted to figure 
in history as a conqueror, like Alexander the Great, or 
Caesar. For nearly fifty years, with some short intervals, 
he followed his bent, and made war in turn on the Eng- 
lish, the Dutch, the Germans, and the Spaniards. He de- 
clared war on England in 1666, just as his mother was 
dying. The peace of Utrecht, which ended the wars, was 
signed in 1*713. By all these wars France gained but a 
i^w scraps of territory^ whicl) a^ded pothing to her great' 



234 [1651-1680 

ness. She would not have gained these but for the genius 
of her great generals — Turenne, the great Conde, Yauban, 
Luxembourg, and others. What she lost I have now to 
tell you. 

When Louis became king, he found that the money mat- 
ters of the kingdom were in the hands of a thief named 
Fouquet, who, like Mazarin, made an immense fortune, and 
gave parties at which every guest found a purse of gold on 
his dressing-table for use in the card-room. Louis got rid 
of him, and set over his treasury a wise minister named 
Colbert. It was Colbert's business to find money to carry 
on the king's wars. 

This he did ; but it broke his heart, and brought his 
gray hairs to a miserable grave. He lived to see one tenth 
of the whole people get their bread by begging. Persons 
who could not afford to eat meat themselves were forced 
to buy meat to feed soldiers who were quartered on them. 
That noble priest, Archbishop Fenelon, told the king to his 
face that he had made France one great hospital. Every 
able-bodied man was forced into the army, and there was 
no one to till the fields or to work in factories or wait in 
shops. Riots round the bakers' stores were every-day af- 
fairs. The farmers' cattle had been seized and sold for 
taxes. In one place, while a farmer was burying his dead 
wife, a tax-collector broke into his house, wounded him, 
beat his maid-servant with a stick, and killed his daughter. 
The peasants were driven to eat the grass of the fields and 
the bark of trees. 

All this while Louis was not only carrying on mon- 
strously expensive wars, but was building a palace at Ver- 
sailles which you can see to this day — it cost over a hundred 
and fifty millions of livres — a palace at Marli, a castle at 
St. Germain, any number of splendid residences in Paris 
for himself and his friends, public buildings for glory, four 
or five triumphal arches, and was completing the Louvre. 
He did not even stint himself in his private expenses. On 
a little junket of a few days which he took to Versailles 




MADAME DE MAINTENON 



1651-1680] 237 

he spent about sixty thousand dollars of our money, one 
half of which went in gambling. One of the king's lady 
friends lost a million livres one night at cards, another 
spent twenty thousand dollars on Christmas presents. I 
need not tell you that when the king and the court set such 
an example of reckless waste and brutal indifference to the 
sufferings of the people, society w^as sure to become wicked 
and rotten. In this case the rottenness showed itself in a 
peculiar way. A curious epidemic of poisoning broke out. 

The story goes that the first poisoners came from Italy. 
I do not know how this may be. But it is certain that 
Henrietta of England, wife of the Duke of Orleans, drank 
a glass of succory water, and immediately turned pale with 
agony. They would not let her have the physician she 
wanted. A canon of the Church called to confess her ; he 
advised her to submit to the will of God. Some courtiers 
came, and made light of her pams. Her husband was sur- 
prised, but did not stay with her. The only one who re- 
mained by her side was the great preacher Bossuet, who 
was with her when she expired, the day after she had drunk 
the glass of water. It was giveii out at the court that she 
had died of cholera. 

Then other persons of high rank died under surprising 
circumstances, and in every case after a short illness. Sud- 
den deaths became so common that the government created 
a special court, called the Burning Chapel, to look into them. 
This court caused the arrest of a woman whose name was 
Marie de Brinvilliers, and who was a marquise and surpris- 
ingly beautiful. Her story was horrible. After her mar- 
riage she fell in love with a man who was said to have 
learned from an Italian the way to make a famous poison, 
then called aqua tofana, which was in reality a solution 
of arsenic. He told the secret to Marie. 

She tried it on her chambermaid, and on sick people in 
the hospitals, and, finding it answer, she poisoned her fa- 
ther, her two brothers, and her child. She then took to 
poisoning from pure love of the thing, and put to death a 



238 [1651-1680 

number of people whom she did not know and whom she 
had no reason to hate. She was caught by a policeman 
who disguised himself as a priest, and wormed out of her 
many secrets when she went to confess. She retracted her 
confessions before the Burning Chapel. But when she was 
laid on an iron bed in the torture-chamber, and the roj^es 
round the pulleys began to pull her beautiful arms and legs 
out of their sockets, she screamed, and confessed every- 
thing. She had put to death an astonishing number of 
people, and Paris rejoiced when she was led limping from 
the torture- chamber to the stake and was burned alive. 

Another female poisoner, you may be surprised to hear, 
was Olympia di Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin. She 
was summoned to appear before the Burning Chapel, but 
refused, and fled to Spain. Her reputation had gone before 
her, and neither the king nor the Court of Spain was glad 
to see her. After a time they relented. She became inti- 
mate with the queen, and one day lier majest}^ took a glass 
of milk from her hand. The queen only lived a few hours. 
The Spanish police tried to catch the murderess, but she 
fled. 

You will not perhaps be sorry to hear that this wicked 
v^oman wandered through Europe for twenty-seven years, 
hunted out of place after place when people learned who 
she was. She had not a friend in the world, and in her 
old age she had not a penny. 



Chapter XXXVII 

MORE PERSECUTIOX OF THE HUGUENOTS 

A.D. 1680-m5 

About the time when Louis the Fourteenth was being 
assured b}^ his courtiers that he was a greater warrior than 
Cii3sar, a greater statesman than Charlemagne, and a greater 
monarch than had ever before lived, it occurred to him 
that it would be a fine thing to crush out the Huguenots, 
and to have but one religion in his kingdom. 

At first, his idea was to break down the Protestants by- 
degrees. He told his oflficers that Protestantism was a 
malady caused by hot blood, which should be treated with 
gentleness rather than with severity. Thus, he let the 
Huguenots pray in their own churches and in thsir own 
way; but he forbade their becoming lawyers or doctors or 
members of the parliament. In those days, there were no 
barracks for soldiers ; the men were quartered on citizens, 
who had to lodge and feed them. Louis ordered that sol- 
diers should be quartered on Huguenots rather than on 
Catholics. As the soldiers were often ruflians, who mal- 
treated the household that housed them, stole all they could 
lay their hands on, and in case of remonstrance beat those 
they robbed, it was a cruel hardship to have them as lodg- 
ers. The troopers sometimes made things pleasant for the 
family which boarded them by beating drums day and 
night, the drummers relieving each other at intervals, so 
that nobody could sleep. 

By annoying the Huguenots in this and other ways, by 
seizing their ministers and thrusting them into jail, and 
torturing some into submission, the king induced many 
Huguenots to recant their religion and become Catholics, 



240 [1680-1Y15 

Madame de Maintenon, who had become very pious and 
thought a Huguenot had no right to live, felt sure that 
Louis was going to bring back all his subjects into the 
Church. She was well seconded by a minister of the king 
named Louvois. But still there remained a few thousand 
Huguenots whom neither persecution could subdue nor 
danger shake, and who stood firm by their religion through 
all. To overcome these, Louis the Fourteenth revoked the 
Edict of Nantes — which Henry the Fourth had issued to be 
forever a guarantee of religious freedom in France. The 
revocation was made known on the iVth of October, 1685; 
the edict had given peace to France for eighty- seven 
years. When it was repealed, Protestants had no rights 
whatever. They were forbidden to pray. Their churches 
and chapels were torn down. Their ministers were locked 
up in filthy dungeons. Their children were baptized by 
force by the Catholic priests. And finally they were for- 
bidden to leave the kingdom. Madame de Maintenon, who 
was the king's adviser in all this business, said that she 
intended to make the Huguenots ridiculous. It was, I 
think, France that was made ridiculous in the end. 

In Languedoc the women were fiery ; they are so to 
this day. They refused to change their faith. The king 
sent word to have all of them who were not of noble birth 
w^hipped on the bare back and branded. In the Cevennes, 
a cruel priest filled his house with Huguenot prisoners. 
The peasants rose one night, tore him shrieking out of his 
house, and stabbed him to death with fifty-two stabs. Each 
peasant explained his stab. " That's for my father, broken on 
the wheel !" *' That's for my brother, sent to the galleys!" 
" That's for my mother, dead of grief !" And so on. 

In spite of the order forbidding Protestants to leave the 
country, some four or five hundred thousand did so, includ- 
ing some of the most skilful and industrious artisans in 
France. They came to this country, or went to England, 
Belgium, Holland, or Germany, and took their skill and 
ll^ew" knpwlpdge w\ik tljem, so that some of tfee most pro^" 



1680-1715] 241 

perous industries in France died out. Those who remained 
kept their faith a secret. For a hundred years after the 
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Huguenots had no rights 
in France. Their marriages were no marriages ; their 
children were not lawful children ; when they died, they 
had no right to decent burial. But the Huguenots lived 
through it all, and are flourishing and giving great men to 
France to-day, when the memory of Madame de Maintenon 
and Louvois and Louis the Great taints the air like a car- 
cass that has lain in the noonday sun. 

You will not be surprised to hear that the last years of 
this tyrant were gloomy and miserable. He had lost his 
sons, his eldest son's w^ife, his grandson, and nearly all 
those whom he had loved; he was alone. "I," said old 
Madame de Maintenon, "am compelled to endure his 
whims, his silence, his ill-temper ; he never says a kind 
word to me." His confessor had been a good and gentle 
priest named Father la Chaise ; when you go to Paris you 
will see the fine cemetery which bears his name. He was 
succeeded by a rough Jesuit named Le Tellier, who wor- 
ried the king to death about his soul, and kept him in 
deadly fear of dying. The old man — he was seventy-seven 
— had not an hour of peace. 

An ulcer appeared on his leg, and mortification set in. 
The odor of the sore was so offensive that all his family 
left him, and, after great suffering, he died at last on 
September 1st, 1715, with no one near him but servants, 
priests, and doctors ; not one single person whom he had 
loved, or who had professed to love him. 

You will find in larger books than this that the reign of 
Louis the Fourteenth is considered one of the most glorious 
in French history. This distinction is not due to any merit 
in the king, but to the fact that under his reign men of 
genius appeared in almost every branch of human knowl- 
edge. Some of the books of that period are out of print ; 
but a great many others you can read with as much pleas- 
ure to-day as the French felt when they first appeared. I 
16 



242 [1680-1715 

suppose that as long as the French language lasts people 
will love to read the comedies of Moliere, the tragedies of 
Corneille and Racine, and the poems of Boileau ; the ser- 
mons of Fenelon, Bossuet, and Bourdaloue ; the wit and 
wisdom of Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and La Bruyere ; the 
fables of La Fontaine ; the letters of Madame de Sevigne. 
There was no good music as yet in France, nor were there 
great paintings ; but you can see to this day how well 
the architects of the time of Louis the Fourteenth knew 
their business. We have no better soldiers to-day than 
Turenne, no bolder sailors than Duquesne, and no more 
skilful fort-builder than Yauban. It was natural that the 
age which saw all these great men flourish together should 
be considered a golden age. 

I am afraid that, when you think of Louis the Four- 
teenth, you may remember him less by these illustrious 
Frenchmen than by the recollection of his cruel wars, of 
his dreadful persecutions of the Huguenots, and his brutal 
tyranny. It was under him that the infamous prison of 
the Bastile became a dungeon where the king, or one of 
his courtiers who had the king's ear, could imprison a man 
for life without trial and without telling his friends where 
he was. When the doors of the Bastile were opened, 
after the death of Louis the Fourteenth, a poor Italian was 
found who had been locked up there for thirty-live years, 
and had never been told what he had been arrested for. 
He knew no one, had no money, and begged for the privi- 
lege of going back to jail and ending his days there. 

A prisoner who did die in the Bastile, and about whom 
there has been much discussion, was the Man in the Iron 
Mask. This man had been for many years a prisoner on 
the island of St. Marguerite when he was brought to the 
Bastile in 1698 by Saint Mars, at the time the latter was 
appointed governor of that prison. He was brought in a 
closed carriage which was surrounded by mounted guards, 
who had orders to shoot him if he spoke. He wore a velvet 
mask set on an iron frame, and was forbidden to remove it 



1680-1^15] 



243 



under pain of instant death. In the Bastile he saw no one 
hut the governor, who carried loaded pistols at his belt. 
The prisoner had been told that if he tried to remove the 
mask or to speak, the orders were to blow his brains out. 
He lived that silent life for several years. When he died, 
he was buried secretly at night in St. Paul's burial-ground, 
and every particle of his clothing except the mask, which 
he still wore after death, was bn^-ned. 



ijl^Ss 







THE BASTILE 



Now, the question is, Who was the Man in the Iron Mask? 
You will find in large histories attempts to explain who he 
was. One of the most plausible of these is that he was a 
twin-brother of Louis the Fourteenth, who was thus seclud- 
ed from the world to prevent his setting up a claim to the 
throne. I hardly think that you can believe this, nor do 
I see how you can agree with other writers, who have tried 
to identify the Man in the Iron Mask with another person- 
age. The only thing that you can be sure of is that there 
was such a man, and that he suffered this cruel imprison- 
ment for life for no offence that is known. All the rest is 
mystery. 



Chapter XXXVIII 

THE REGENT ORLEANS 

A.7^. 1715-1723 

When Louis the Fourteenth died, the heir to the throne 
was his great-grandson Louis, who was a boy five years 
old. His great-grandfather had appointed a council of 
regency; but Philippe, Duke of Orleans, said he would 
be sole regent, and the parliament, which was glad of a 
chance of showing its spite to the dead king, replied : So 
he should. He gave money to the soldiers ; they got out 
their firelocks and their pikes, and everybody then agreed 
that Orleans should be sole regent. 

He was a stupid person, who was always led by the 
nbse by somebody. When he was a young man, his uncle, 
Louis the Fourteenth, ordered him to marry Mademoiselle 
de Blois, against his mother's wishes ; he obeyed, and the 
next time he went to court, his mother called him to her 
side and boxed his ears before the whole assemblage. He 
walked out without a word. 

His first business was to bury his uncle, and this he did 
in a shabby way. There was no grand procession ; only a 
few carriages followed the body of him who, according to 
the courtiers, had been the greatest general and the great- 
est statesman and the greatest monarch in history. By 
the side of the road to St. Denis, where the kings of France 
were buried, tents had been set up, and roysterers drank 
in them, guzzled in them, and sang coarse songs as the 
corpse rolled by. 

The regent began hopefully, however. He reduced the 
army, set free a number of prisoners in the Bastile, and 
checked the persecution of the Protestants, But he W48 



1'715-1'723] 245 

too easy-going and lazy to stick to any line of conduct, 
and the Bastile soon began to fill up again, and the Prot- 
estants to feel the iron hand of the Church. Philippe's 
idea was to have a good time, and his idea of a good time 
— and the idea of his courtiers too — was to gret drunk, to 
associate with low, vicious people, and to boast of doing 
things which good people never do, or are ashamed of do- 
ing. He bragged of his wickedness, and the court bragged 
of its wickedness, and both of them had good ground for 
the brag. You may fancy what good society was like in 
France when such people were at the head of it. 

The Regent Orleans lived under the thumbs of pretty, 
dissipated women ; he was also governed by two men in 
turn. 

The first of these was, when the regent made his ac- 
quaintance, an abbe and a tutor. His name was Dubois. 
He was a little, thin man, with a face like a weasel ; so 
base and corrupt and mean and false that I know of no 
viler creature in history. He won the regent's heart by 
doing for him dirty work which no gentleman would have 
touched. He was, however, bright and witty and good 
company ; he made a pretty fair politician, when chance 
threw politics in his way. This man the regent took to 
his bosom and made one of his chief advisers. As he 
called himself an abbe, he was supposed to belong to the 
Church ; he applied to the pope to make him an archbishop, 
and the pope, who was at first staggered by the impudence 
of the request — it being as well known at Rome as in Paris 
that Dubois was a blackguard — at last consented, probably 
remembering that there had been archbishops before who 
were not angels. 

Then the weasel-faced rogue asked to be made a cardi- 
nal. People laughed to split their sides at this, but Du- 
bois never gave up anything on which he had set his heart. 
He begged, he cajoled, he threatened ; he crawled like a 
serpent, roared like a lion, scratched like a cat. He told 
lies njorning, noon, and night, and when he told the mean- 



246 [1'715-1'723 

est lies lie prayed the loudest. He cringed, and bribed 
the pope's nephews and friends; he reminded the pope 
that he let no day pass without sending to Rome either 
jewels or books or presents of some kind. The head of 
the Church was so hard pressed that at last he lay down 
and died, in order, as they said at the time, to get rid of 
Dubois. But a new pope was chosen. He was poor. Du- 
bois sent him cartloads of silver money taken from the 
treasury of France. It is said that he forwarded sums 
which were equal to two million dollars of our money to 
Rome. He finally begged the Protestant King of England 
to intercede for him ; and George the First, who regarded 
the thing as a monstrous good joke, wrote to the pope that 
in his opinion the weasel-faced knave ought to be a cardi- 
nal. The pope was only too anxious to please the Protes- 
tant king, and Dubois got a cardinal's hat and was happy. 

The great lords of France refused to sit at the council- 
board with him ; but the regent made him prime-minister, 
and Cardinal Dubois became ruler of the kingdom. Not 
for long, however. 

He was made a cardinal in July, 1721. In August, 1723, 
he undertook to review a regiment, though he had never 
learned to ride. His horse jolted him up and down so 
roughly that an internal abscess, caused by his bad habits, 
burst, gangrene set in, and he died. At the last, he refused 
to take the sacrament, because there was no one of higher 
rank than a priest to anoint him with the holy oil. He said 
that no one of inferior degree to a cardinal should smooth 
his path to heaven. 

The regent's other leader was a Scotch gambler, named 
John Law. He was a fascinating fellow, young, hand- 
some, witty, dashing, graceful, a king of hearts, and a brill- 
iant man of business. France was in desperate straits for 
money ; the regent had neither credit nor coin. Law per- 
suaded him that if he could start speculation among the 
people the government would be able to float paper money, 
and to pay off enough of its debts to be easy in its circum- 



1'715-1'723] 



247 



stances. The regent agreed to anything which would fur- 
nish liim means to give his little suppers and to present 
diamonds to his fair lady friends. So Law had a chance 
to try his plan. 



Actieu.se NACHT-WIND-Zantfermetzvn-Tover Slons 



Quam. 't vandiaae/ 




CAlilCATUIii: OV JOUA LAW 



The first part of it succeeded very well indeed. All France 
went mad on speculation. All over the French colonies, 
and in all sorts of odd places throughout the world, towns 
were built — among others the city of New Orleans on the 
Mississippi; it was named after the regent — and every 
town was owned by a company, which issued shares of 



248 [1715-1723 

stock. Companies were started to carry on every business 
you can think of, and some businesses you never heard 
of. All of them issued shares; everybody was wild to buy 
them; the shares went up day after day, and everybody 
seemed to be making a fortune. Great lords, bishops, 
generals, lawyers, merchants, court ladies and ladies'-maids, 
gentlemen and valets, all crowded into the little Rue Quin- 
campoix, where the shares were manufactured, and scram- 
bled for them. On some days the throng was so dense 
that people were crushed to death near Law's office. 

This went on for six months. Then it began to be no- 
ticed that there was not so much gold and silver in peo- 
ple's pockets as usual ; the only money which passed from 
hand to hand was paper. Then j^rices began to rise. A 
pair of stockings cost in paper ten dollars of our money; a 
yard of cloth, twenty dollars. Then everybody wanted 
real money for their goods, paper money dropped in value 
to nothing, the speculators w^ere ruined, and the govern- 
ment was worse off than it had been when John Law began 
his financial tricks and juggleries. The people mobbed 
him and smashed his carriage. He had to fly from Paris. 
But he was a crank, not a rogue ; he went away almost 
without a dollar, and spent his last years in poverty in 
Venice, persisting to the end that his system was all right, 
if he had been allowed time to work it out. He had had 
all the money in France in his hands; he did not take a 
franc for himself. 

It was in the regent's time that the plague — that awful 
disease of the East — paid its last visit to France. It was 
brought to Marseilles by a ship from Asia Minor. It was 
more terrible than any disease of our day. It struck down 
chiefly strong men and women in the flower of their age ; 
those whom it did strike generally died within twenty-four 
hours. Everybody who could fled from Marseilles — the 
rich men, the officials, the members of the parliament, the 
lawyers, the merchants, and even the doctors. Happily 
there was in that city an intrepid priest — Bishop Belzunce. 
He stayed. 



1'715-1'723] 249 

All around him his attendant priests, his servants, his 
choir-boys, died ; he stayed, and spent day after day walk- 
ing on foot among the dying and the dead, holding a cup 
of water to the parched lips of the stricken, soothing them, 
giving them the last consolations of the Church, and di- 
recting the burial of the corpses. After a time other priests 
joined him, and gave their lives for the afflicted. Out of 
twenty-six Jesuits, eighteen died of the plague ; out of 
fifty-five Capuchins, forty-three died of the same disease. 
Priests of other orders were just as heroic. When you 
think of the wrong-doings of priests in the chapters you 
have read, remember the Marseilles plague, and give due 
credit to the Church. 

I do not hear that the regent went to Marseilles when 
the plague was raging, or that he allowed the dreadful 
news from that city to interfere with his merry suppers. 
He diverted his mind with pleasanter pastimes than visit- 
ing the sick. 

On the 2d of December, 1'723, he was sitting with the 
lovelj'- Duchess of Falaris, who was as bright as she was 
pretty. The regent leaned his head on her round white 
shoulder, and said, 

"Duchess, tell me one of those fairy stories you invent 
so well." 

She stroked his head with her jewelled hand, and began, 

"Once upon a time, there was a king and a queen — " 

She got no further. The regent's head had fallen into 
her lap. She sprang up and rang for help ; doctors and 
servants rushed into the room. But it was too late. Phil- 
ippe of Orleans was dead — dead of a stroke of apoplexy, 
brought on by the wicked life he had led. 



Chapter XXXIX 

LOUIS THE FIFTEENTH 

A.D. 1723-1774 

When the regent died, the great-grandson of Louis the 
Fourteenth was thirteen and was already King of France, 
under the name of Louis the Fifteenth. That was in the 
year 1723. He lived till 1774, two years before our Dec- 
laration of Independence ; so that his actual reign lasted 
fifty -one years, one of the longest in French history. 
During about thirty-five of these years he carried on wars 
against Germany, England, Austria, Italy, and Spain ; and 
though he was not beaten in all the battles, the end of 
the wars was that France lost all her colonies in North 
America, nearly all her provinces in India, several of her 
islands in the West Indies, nearly all her navy, scores of 
millions of treasure, and about a million men who were 
killed in the battles, or wdio died from wounds or disease 
afterward. You Avill perhaps think that France ought to 
have learned the lesson that war does not pay. But she 
bad not. 

I should tire you if I told you the story of these wars. 
One war was like another ; each battle was a copy of the 
last ; sometimes one side won, sometimes the other ; but in 
every case a great number of poor fellows, who had noth- 
ing to do with the objects of the wars, were killed or crip- 
pled, and the people who stayed at home had to stint their 
children in food and clothing to provide money to feed and 
pay the soldiers. There was one battle fought near the 
town of Fontenoy, in Belgium, between the English, Dutch, 
and Austrians on the one side, and the French on the othei-. 
The story, goes that a regiment of English guards, led by 



1 723-1 '7'74] 251 

tbe king's son, met a regiment of French guards, led by a 
great French noble ; and that an English officer, taking off 
his hat, called out, 

" Gentlemen of the French guard, fire first !" 
To which a French officer, also taking off his hat, replied, 
" Fire yourselves, gentlemen of England ! We never fire 
first." 

Upon which the Englishmen fired a volley, and laid the 
front rank of the Frenchmen low. 

You can believe this story if you think it probable. I 
think myself that an officer who let his men be killed, when 
he had a chance of saving them, didn't understand his 
business ; and I suspect the officers of the French guard 
understood theirs. 

Notwithstanding his endless wars, Louis the Fifteenth 
was not as wild for blood and glory as his great-grand- 
father. He preferred ladies' society to the society of 
camps. When he was fifteen, his friends looked round for 
a princess to marry him to. Madame de Prie, who took 
the delicate matter in hand, made out a list of ninety-nine 
who would answer ; the list included fifty-five Lutherans, 
thirteen Calvinists, and three Greeks. Out of the lot the 
choice fell on Mary Leczinska, a Polish girl who was stupid 
and homely and seven years older than Louis. Her father 
had once been King of Poland, and was living on a small 
pension which the French allowed him, at Wissembourg, 
the place where one of the great battles in the Franco-Ger- 
man war took place. He was so overjoyed when he heard 
that his daughter had been chosen over the other ninety- 
eight, that he ran into her room, crying, 

" Fall we on our knees, dear daughter, and thank God !" 
I hardly think that Mary would have thanked God 
heartily if she could have foreseen her married lot. For 
her husband led even a worse life than the reorent. He 
was always ruled by some woman or other, and he gen- 
erally preferred the worst woman he could find. After 
many changes, he fell into the hands of a cunning schemer 



252 



[1723-1774 



named Jane Poisson, who, after two years' chase, managed 
to catch him at a masked ball. She was pretty and smart ; 
the king made her Marquise of Pompadour. For twenty- 
four years her will was law. She had an income of half a 
million dollars of our money, three castles, four palaces 
in the cities, and several estates ; she made and unmade 
magistrates, judges, and generals ; nothing was done with- 
out her direction. Even the king trembled when her voice 
rose in anger. 




FAN OF LOUIS XV. PERIOD 



When he grew tired of her he sent her away, and put 
in her place a girl who had been a milliner. Her he created 
Countess Dubarry, and she ruled him to the end. She was 
not as proud as Madame of Pompadour, and spent much 
of the money which the king gave her in works of charity. 
But the people of Paris could not forgive her for what 
she had been, and when the dreadful days of the guillotine 
came round, they found her out — she was an old, gray- 
haired woman then — and they cut off her head. 

I am happy to say that Louis the Fifteenth was the last. 
French king who led a dreadfully bad life. Of him you 
cannot think too ill. They said of him in his old age that 



1723-1774] 253 

his wickedness would have shocked even the Regent Or- 
leans. 

For a large portion of his reign, Louis's chief councillor 
was a wise and good priest named Cardinal Fleury, who, I 
imagine, must have been sorely distressed at the life his 
king was leading: He was seventy-three years of age when 
he became prime-minister, and I suppose he had enough to 
do to look after the money matters of the kingdom, and to 
settle the constant trouble with the people and the parlia- 
ments. In one way and another the king spent on his own 
pleasures and on his friends something like thirty million 
dollars of our money every year, and it was hard to get this 
sum out of an overtaxed people like the French, though 
these did number at that time some twenty million souls. 

With the exception of a short period, when there was no 
war raging and the harvests were very good, the j)eople 
were in dreadful poverty throughout this reign. They 
knew it was in part the king's fault, and when they met 
him driving in his splendid carriage, with the prancing 
horses and the golden harness, and the whiskered guards 
cantering round it, and some ravishing marquise by his 
side, they did not shout " Long live the king !" as Louis 
would have liked, but groaned in a hollow voice, 

" Want ! Famine ! Bread !" 

I have mentioned to you the parliaments which were 
held in several provinces, and which met, at set times, at 
Paris, Toulouse, Aix, Rouen, Rennes, and other towns. For 
a long time the chief business of these parliaments was to 
hear lawsuits ; but ever since the time of Louis the Thir- 
teenth they had tried, greatly against the wish of the kings, 
to take a hand in public affairs. The Parliament of Paris 
now drew up a paper in which they said that it was all 
wrong to lock up people in the Bastile without giving them 
a trial, to shave and imprison women who did not attend 
church, and to refuse to give the sacrament to dying per- 
sons who had notions of their own about the way to man- 
age churches. 



254 [1'723-17'74 

This brought a storm about the king's ears. Two car- 
dinals and twenty-seven bishops hastened to Versailles to 
protest against the impudence of the parliament. Madame 
of Pompadour said she had never heard anything like it in 
her life. The king wrote a pettish letter to the parliament, 
begging to be let alone with his fair lady friends. Parlia- 
ment refused to open the letter, but sent a written protest 
to Cardinal Flemy. The cardinal refused to receive it. 
Then fifty members of the parliament, all in their long scar- 
let robes, went to Marli, in fourteen carriages, and demand- 
ed to see the king. He would not see them. They drove 
home, and told how they had been shown the door. That 
night the cardinal arrested one hundred and thirty-nine 
members of the parliament, including the presidents, and 
locked them up in prison in distant parts of France. The 
pot, you see, was beginning to boil. 

The Parliament of Rouen ordered an inquiry into the 
cause of the high price of bread. It was forbidden to ask 
questions, and when it insisted, it was dispersed by sol- 
diers. The Parliament of Dijon sent a remonstrance to 
the king, reminding him that he ought to govern according 
to law ; the members who drew up the remonstrance were 
put in jail. Just before the Parliament of Paris was dis- 
persed by the king, it had dissolved the Jesuit society and 
closed the Jesuit houses. The Jesuits complained that 
they were persecuted. I suppose they had forgotten the 
way in which they had handled the Huguenots. 

Troubles began to thicken round the king. Poor, plain, 
stupid, patient Mary, his wife, died ; his son and his son's 
wife died also ; the heir to the throne was a boy of eleven, 
who afterward became Louis the Sixteenth. The king had 
had a warning which reminded him of Henry the Fourth. 
One day, as he was walking down the grand staircase of 
the marble court at Versailles, a man ran against him and 
drove a penknife into his side. Louis clapped his hand to 
the wound, and drew it away, covered with blood. The 
man was seized. 



1V23-1774] 



255 



It turned out that he was a crank named Bamiens, who 
had no reason for seeking the king's death. The wound 
proved trifling. But Damiens was convicted of an attempt 
to kill the king, and, according to the old barbarous law, 
was sentenced to be torn to pieces by wild horses. 




VOLTAIRE 



When the day came for his execution — which was to 
take place in one of the great squares of Paris — the windows 
of every house in the square were rented to sight-seers. 
The highest nobles and the finest ladies of the court went 
to see the show. Enormous prices were paid for seats at 
windows. After the sentence was read, four wild horses 
were hitched to the ankles and wrists of the prisoner, and 
each was started, with shouts and lashes and goads, in a dif- 
ferent direction. The horses were balky, and could not un- 
derstand what was required of them. After they had made 



256 [1'723-1'7'74 

many starts and had spent over two hours in furious gal- 
loping, with men at their sides whi23ping them, they tore off 
the wretched man's arms and one of his legs. The other 
leg still remained attached to the body ; the executioner had 
to cut the tendons before it could be separated. All thi's 
w^hile Damiens lived and filled the air wdth his shrieks, wdiile 
the nobles clapped their hands when the horses made a 
great rush, and the fair ladies fanned themselves and gig- 
gled to each other about their dresses and their flirtations. 

Sorrow had made the king a mournful man. He had a 
good daughter who became a nun, and who besought her fa- 
ther to repent and amend his life. On the other hand, Ma- 
dame Dubarry and the court were all for keeping up their 
deviltries, and would not hear of the king's reforming. Be- 
tween the two the king was drawn now this way and now 
that ; but the nun generally got the worst of the tussle. 
Louis was quite willing to pray and play at piety, but he 
couldn't give up his wicked pleasures. It was not till he 
fell ill of the small-pox that he shut his door in Madame 
Dubarry's face. On the 10th of May, 1774, a few weeks 
before the first congress of the American colonies met at 
Philadelphia, he died in great pain, with his features dis- 
torted by his terrible malady. 

As many great Frenchmen flourished under Louis the 
Fifteenth as under Louis the Fourteenth ; but their great- 
ness showed itself in a different way. They cared less for 
writing poetry or even fine prose than for philosophy, sci- 
ence, and high politics. Yoltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, 
Diderot, D'Alembert, and Buffon laid down the principles 
of free government with a force and clearness which have 
never been surpassed ; they showed the iniquity of royal 
tyranny, and the absurdity of a privileged nobility, just at 
the time when the iniquity and the absurdity were most 
flourishing. Everybody — especially the court and the no- 
bility — devoured their books, and quoted them to each 
other w^ith praise. It never seemed to occur to them that 
some day the people might wai^it to put these fine princi- 




JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 

pies into practice. They were blind as bats to the meaning 
of the lesson they learned so well. 

You may remember the reign of Louis the Fifteenth 
as the period when the French empire in North America 
ceased to exist. At the time he came to the throne France 
owned all (panada — which included the territory from Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick to the great lakes — Ohio, In- 
diana, Illinois, and Michigan, both banks of the Missis- 
sippi to its mouth, and the country lying back of the west 
bank from the southern end of Louisiana to Northern Mis- 
souri. At the end of Louis's reign the French flag did not 
float over a foot of this territory. The whole of it had 
passed into the hands of the English, excej^t Louisiana, 
which had been ceded to Spain. 
17 




LOUIS XVI. FROM A COIN 



Chapter XL 

LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH 

A.D. 1'7'74-1'789 

Louis the Sixteenth was twenty when he succeeded 
his grandfather as King of France, in 1774. He was an 
awkward, shy lad, slow of speech and timid in manner, 
fond of books, and delighted when he could shut himself 
up with a friend who was a locksmith, and forge and file 
locks and keys. His intentions were good, though his 
mind was narrow. He purposed to lead a decent life, and 
to do his duty by his people. His wife, Marie Antoinette 
of Austria, was a giddy girl, who adored dancing and fancy 
balls. She laughed at etiquette, and made an intimate of 
her dressmaker. She loved setting new fashions. Under 
her lead, the ladies of the court would sometimes wear 
simple white muslin gowns like their waiting-maids ; and 
then again they would crown themselves with lofty moun- 
tains of gauze, flowers, and feathers, so that their heads ap- 



1774-1789] 250 

peared to be in the middle of their bodies. Marie Antoi- 
nette had blue eyes, a fine figure, small hands and feet, a 
graceful carriage, and a most brilliant complexion. I am 
glad to be able to add that she was not the wicked woman 
which she was accused of being when the French turned 
against her, though people thought it an unfortunate omen 
when fifty-three persons were crushed to death at her coro- 
nation. 

In order that you may realize the causes of the Revolu- 
tion, of which I shall have to tell you the story in this 
and the succeeding chapters, you must know something of 
the condition of France during the reign of Louis the Six- 
teenth. 

In the first place, you must understand that, outside of 
the cities, the people were either nobles, churchmen, or 
peasants. The two former classes were everything, the 
last class nothina^. Most of the taxes which were collected 
by the kings to support their armies and their courts were 
paid by the peasants ; the nobles and clergy paid little or 
nothing. Within their domains the nobles, and the clergy 
— who were often feudal nobles themselves — were masters 
of the peasants. The peasant was bound to send his wheat 
to be ground at the nobleman's mill, to have his grapes 
pressed at the nobleman's press, to have his loaves of bread 
baked in the nobleman's oven. The nobles kept deer and 
hares and rabbits and game birds which fed on the peas- 
ant's crops ; he was forbidden to kill the game, and in some 
places he was forbidden to mow the grass for fear of break- 
ing the partridge-eggs, while in others he was not allowed 
to manure his fields for fear of injuring the flavor of the 
game. 

Each peasant was bound to put in so many days' work 
every year on the roads, and he was not paid for his work. 
He had to pay rent to the noble for the land he cultivated, 
though it was his own ; when he sent his stuff to market, 
the noble collected a tax on it. The peasant could not sell 
bis land without paying a fine to the noble. When he got 



260 [1'7'74-1'789 

into trouble, he had to take his lawsuit to a court of which 
the noble was the judge. When he crossed a bridge, he 
paid toll to the noble. When he had grown his crop and 
sold it, the Church came down ujDon him for its tithe. 

The nobles and the clergy were generally fairly well edu- 
cated for that age. The peasants knew nothing. Their 
mayors could not read or write; their tax-collectors could 
not add up a column of figures. Between the times of 
Henry the Fourth and Louis the Sixteenth, the land-tax, 
which was called the taille, had increased tenfold. It was 
levied on parishes as a whole ; if one land-owner would not 
or could not pay, the others had to make up the deficiency. 
I need not tell you that the nobles and the priests came to 
despise people who were so ignorant and so spiritless as to 
submit to such wrongs. They regarded the peasants as 
brutes. 

A noble was free to thrash a peasant with his heavy 
hunting-whip, and the peasant was so cowed that he never 
struck back. The noble took from the peasant his wife 
or his daughter, if he fancied either. The poor, dark-faced 
grubber of the earth, in his ragged clothes and his wooden 
shoes, had to stand it. When the crops failed and the 
peasants starved, a noble governor of Dijon told them that 
the grass was coming up finely ; they had better go and 
browse. A noble could order one of his peasants to spend 
the night in beating the ponds with a stick, to prevent the 
frogs from croaking and disturbing his noble sleep. 

In the cities, there was another class of Frenchmen, who 
were called burgesses. These were above day-laborers, 
and yet below churchmen and noblemen — they were mer- 
chants; shopkeepers; makers of cloth, tools, bricks, and iron 
ware ; lawyers, doctors, druggists, bankers, and the like. 
They were not as ignorant as the peasants, and many of 
them were rich. But they could not associate with the 
nobles, and were an inferior class — not to be beaten with 
hunting-whips, but to be made to keep their distance — and 
whOj when they visited a noble, stood in the hall and were 



1114-1189] 



261 



jeered at by lackeys. They were not often suffered to 
interfere, or to have any opinion on public affairs. 

When Louis the Sixteenth settled down to the govern- 
ment of the country, he began to root out some of the 
more grievous wrongs which had been handed down from 
former kings. He put a stop to torture. He forbade fur- 
ther interference with the Huguenots. He abolished the 
law which forbade a peasant-girl from marrying without 




LYONS 

the consent of the noble on whose land she lived. He ira- 
proved the prisons. One of the commonest offences of that 
day was smuggling, which is the natural fruit of bad tar- 
iffs. There is a story, which I believe to be true, of a man 
named Monnerat, who was falsely accused of smuggling. 
He was arrested, thrust into an underground dungeon, and 
kept there for six weeks on bread and water ; then he Avas 
removed to another prison, where he lay twenty months 
^'^ithout trial.. When he got out, he easily proved that he. 



262 [1'774-1T89 

had been taken for some one else, but be got no redress 
from those who had so cruelly wronged him. 

But the more the king tried to reform wrongs, the more 
angry tlie people grew at their having existed. They were 
awaking to their rights, and began to talk very loudly in- 
deed. They first tried, what could be done through their 
parliaments. These bodies spoke out fearlessly, and even 
threatened. Louis had a succession of ministers — Maure- 
pas, Turgot, Necker, Calonne, and Brienne ; Turgot was 
the best of them. Each in his turn tried to pacify the par- 
liaments or to put them down. Neither thing could be 
done. 

In Brittany a parliament met at Rennes. The king or- 
dered it to disperse ; it refused. The king sent a regiment 
to enforce his orders. Fifteen members of the parliament 
fought duels with fifteen officers, and a committee of twelve 
members went to Versailles to protest. When the twelve 
were locked u]) in the Bastile, eighteen more members 
went to demand them back; and these not returning, fifty 
more followed them to the king. Meantime the brave 
Breton people came trooping into Rennes from north and 
south and east and west, all with swords and pikes and 
guns in their hands. 

At Grenoble, orders from the king commanded the par- 
liament to disperse. The church-bells rang the tocsin, and 
the mountaineers of Dauphine came hurrying into Grenoble. 
The king's troops fell back, and the mob, seizing the gov- 
ernor, swore they would hang him to his own chandelier if 
he did not convene the parliament in the city-hall that 
very day and hour. 

The Parliament of Paris had a dispute with the king 
over money matters and taxes. The king had his plan for 
raising money. The parliament declared that the country 
was drifting into bankruptcy, and refused to agree to the 
king's plan. He declared that he would put it in force 
whether they liked it or not. M. d'Espremesnil shouted 
that this was despotism. Another member, De Montsa- 




BRETON PEASANTS 

bert, moved an inquiiy into what had been done with the 
last money raised by taxes. 

On the next night, while the parliament was in session, 
every member in his scarlet gown and with a very grave 
face, an officer of the guards entered, and said he held a 
warrant for the arrest of Espremesnil and Montsabert. 
Would the members present kindly point them out i A 
member started to his feet and cried, 



264 [IVH-IVSQ 

" We are all Espremesnils and Montsaberts. Find them 
if you can." 

The officer retired. Returning next day with a door- 
keeper who knew every member by sight, he bade him 
2:)oint out the men he was in search of. The doorkeeper, 
looking Es23remesnil and Montsabert straight in the eye, 
said he could not see them. 

The king dissolved the parliament and forbade it to 
meet again. Louis had a scheme of his own. He called 
an assembly of the Notables. 

This extraordinary body consisted of a hundred and 
forty-four members — seven princes of the blood, fourteen 
bishops and archbishops, thirty-six dukes and other noble- 
men, fifty councillors and magistrates, all appointed by the 
king, twelve deputies of districts, and twenty-five city of- 
ficials. I need not tell you that this assembly did not set- 
tle the troubles of the nation. 

There was one man in France who understood the situa- 
tion. This was a great big man, with a red, blotched, 
pock-marked face, a head of hair like a lion's mane, and a 
voice like thunder; a man who, when he spoke, made other 
men tremble, he looked so like an angry giant. His name 
was Mirabeau. He had led a riotous youth, and had spent 
years in prisons to which he had been unjustly condemned. 
He was now boiling over with wrath, and spluttered in his 
rage, 

"We must have a meeting of the States-General, and 
we must have it at once." 

Straightway all France, with one voice, demanded the 
meeting of the States-General. This body had not met 
since the time of Mary of Medicis, one hundred and twenty- 
five years before. It consisted of representatives of the 
nobles, the clergy, and the third estate, by which term the 
people were meant. It would not now be considered a 
fairly representative body; it embraced delegates from two 
classes which had no right to separate representation, and 
it did not embrace any one who could fairly speak for the 



1'774-1789] 



265 



peasants and the workingmen. But, such as it was, it was 
the nearest approach to a real congress which France had 
ever had, or could hope to have at that time. You will 
see, as we go on, that it did good and thorough work. The 
day of its meeting was set for May 2d, 1789. 

Before we begin its history, I must tell you something 
of two rather important events which occurred before it 
met. 




LOUIS XVI 



The American Revolution began with the battle of Lex- 
ington in April, 1775 ; the Declaration of Independence was 
issued on July 4th, 1776. On April 17th, 1778, a French 
squadron sailed from Toulon, in France, to aid the United 
States in obtaining their independence. A gallant young 
Frenchman, of whom you will hear more — General Lafay- 
ette — had already joined Washington's staff. For three 
years the French helped your forefathers with men, ships, 
and money, and at the surrender of Yorktown their ser- 



266 [1774-1789 

vices were one of the chief causes of the victoiy. The 
French took the side of the United States in order to feed 
their ancient grudge against England, and not from love 
for the revolted colonies. But perhaps it is not best to 
inquire too curiously into motives. It is enough for you to 
know that France was our friend when we sorely needed 
a friend, and that it will become you to be grateful to 
her accordingly. 

The other event of which this history must say some- 
thing is a story of a necklace. 

On the 18th of August, 1785, Cardinal Rohan, a member 
of one of the noblest families in France, was arrested on his 
way to the church where he was going to celebrate mass, 
and was taken into the king's private room, where Louis 
sat very stern, with his wife Marie Antoinette sitting op- 
posite him and sterner still. 

" Cardinal," said the king, " you bought some diamonds 
of Boehmer ?" 

*'Yes, sire." 

" What did you do with them ?" 

"I understood they had been sent to the queen." And 
the cardinal began to tremble and to turn red and white. 

" Who told you they were for the queen ?" 

*' A lady," stammered the cardinal ; "the Countess of La 
Mothe-Valois." 

" Did it seem natural to you," asked the queen bitterly, 
" that I should give such a commission to Madame de Val- 
ois, whom I despise, to be executed by you, to whom I 
have not spoken for years ?" 

" I have here," said the cardinal, with much confusion, "a 
letter from your majesty on the subject." And he handed 
the letter to the king. One glance at it was sufficient. 

"The letter is not in the queen's handwriting, and the 
signature is a forgery." 

The cardinal replied that he was so overcome that he 
could not stand ; might he retire into the next room ? 

That night he was taken to the Bastile. The storj o| 



1114:-1189] 267 

tli(3 diamond necklace was this : It was worth three quar- 
ters of a million dollars of our money. Tlie Countess of Va- 
lois coveted it, and begged the cardinal to buy it for her. 
He did not care to spend so much money, but he bought 
it, telling the jeweller it was for the queen. Whether Ma- 
dame de Valois deceived him, and persuaded him that she 
had an order to buy it for the queen, or whether he con- 
spired with her to use the queen's credit to cheat the jew- 
eller, was never rightly known. The cardinal was tried 
before the Parliament of Paris and was acquitted ; Ma- 
dame de Valois was convicted, and was sentenced to be 
whipped, branded, and imprisoned. Meanwhile the neck- 
lace disappeared — the stones were probably sold separately. 
The queen never forgave the cardinal ; and, on the other 
hand, the people never forgave the queen for buying, as 
they supposed, seven -hundred -thousand -dollar necklaces 
when the poor were starving. 




MIRABEAU 



Chapter XLI 

MIRABEAU 
A.D. IVSQ-IYQI 

In the early months of 1789 the French people elected 
members of the States-General. The elections passed off 
quietly; but at Paris the shop of a man named Revillon 
was robbed, because he was said to have declared that 
fifteen cents a day was pay enough for a working-man; 
and at Aix, in Provence, a hot-headed noble ordered the 
troops to fire at the people, because they insisted on voting 
for Mirabeau. The nobles had refused to choose Mirabeau, 
though he was a marquis ; so he hired a store, set up a 
sign, "Mirabeau, Dry-goods Dealer," and was chosen as 
a deputy of the third estate. It had been settled that the 
States-General should consist of twelve hundred members, 
three hundred to represent the nobles, three hundred to 
represent the clergy, and six hundred to represent the 
third estate, or, in plain words, the people. 

On the 2d of May the king received them at Versailles. 
The morning was wet ; the nobles and the clergy got out 
of their carriages and entered the palace, leaving the 
members of the third estate standing outside in the rain. 



1789-1791] 269 

On the following Sunday the members attended mass 
together, the nobility in garments of cloth of gold, with 
silk cloaks, lace neckties, and plumed hats ; the common 
clergy in surplices, mantles, and square caps ; the bishops 
in purple robes ; and the deputies of the people in their 
common every-day clothes, and looking shabby by the side 
of the others. The king and queen and court were there 
in splendid attire, flashing with diamonds ; the streets 
leading to the church were hung with tapestry and purple 
velvet spangled with lilies, and lined with troops whose 
bands played martial airs. 

When the States-General met for the despatch of busi- 
ness, it appeared that one great hall had been provided 
for the general meetings of all three classes, another hall 
for the separate use of the clergy, a third for the separate 
use of the nobility, but none for the separate use of the 
third estate. 

" Oh, well," said Mirabeau, " we'll sit in the common 
hall." 

As it turned out, this occupation of the common hall 
by tlie third estate made the nobles and clergy figure as 
outsiders. 

The name of States-General appearing cumbersome, that 
of National Assembly was adopted on the suggestion of 
the Abbe Sieyes. The body was sometimes called the 
Constitutional Assembly ; in this country it would have 
been called a constitutional convention. Then the mem- 
bers of the third estate, finding that the members from 
the Church and the nobility raised objections to uniting 
with them for the business they had to do, declared that 
they themselves were the Assembly, and the other orders 
might join them or not, as they pleased. On this the king 
took possession of the hall, and when the members ap- 
proached it next day they found the doors locked and 
soldiers guarding them. 

Next door to the Assembly Hall was a tennis-court — a 
dark, bare room without seats. In tliat room the members 



270 [IVSQ-IYOI 

took refnge, anrl there they declared that, wherever they 
cliose to meet, they would remain the National Assem- 
bly. They pledged themselves to each other never to sep- 
arate till they had done the work the people had set them 
to do. 

Three days afterward the king ordered them to meet 
him in the Assembly Hall. There he told them that he 
intended to govern the kingdom in his own way, and he 
bade them go home. Then he stalked out. 

The nobility and part of the clergy followed, but not a 
m?mber of the third estate budged or opened his mouth. 
A king's officer spoke up : 

" You have heard the orders of the king. Go !" 

Said Mirabeau: "We will not go. Tell your master that 
we are here by the will of the people, and we will not be 
driven aw^ay except by bayonets." 

Pretty soon the nobility and the clergy got frightened. 
Some of them went to the Assembly, and of their own free 
will gave up their privileges and agreed to pay their 
taxes and submit to the laws like other people. Numbers 
of soldiers of the French Guards began to desert and to 
take the side of the Assembly. But the king had gathered 
round him several regiments of Germans and Swiss, who 
fought for pay and cared nothing for the rights of the 
people. A procession, marching through the streets of 
Paris, was fired upon by German soldiers, and several peo- 
ple killed or wounded. This was first blood. 

The people of Paris sacked the gunsmiths' stores and 
armed themselves with muskets which they found in the 
vaults of the Invalides. With these they attacked the 
Bastile, on July 14th, 1789. 

The Bastile was a fort which had been long used for a 
prison. Its walls were nine feet thick, and it had eight 
towers which overlooked Paris. Soldiers said that it could 
not be taken without heavy cannon, and the people had 
none. But there were only about one hundred soldiers in the 
work, and a mob of many thousand Parisians surrounded 




BREAKING INTO THE INVALIDES 



it, all panting with rage. They literally broke into it by 
force of numbers. The governor, a brave old soldier 
named Delaunay, had refused to surrender and had tried 
to blow the fort up. But at last, when the last drawbridge 
had been lowered, and the roaring, surging mob were pour- 
ing like a flood into the w^ork, he hoisted the white flag. 
The invaders scattered all over the prison in search of pris- 
oners ; they found seven of them in prison cells ; one had 
been there for thirty years, another since his childhood. 
They also found on the walls piteous stories that had been 
scratched by prisoners who had died there. The sight of 
these pitiful inscriptions and of the poor captives, gaunt 
and pale from their long imprisonment, so infuriated the 



272 [1789-1791 

people that they wrenched Governor Delaunay from the 
guards who had him in charge, chopped him in pieces with 
axes and knives, and set his head on the point of a pike. 

That night, as the king was sleeping, after planning with 
his courtiers an attack on Paris at the head of his Germans 
and Swiss, an attendant shook him till he woke and told 
him the news. 

" Why!" said Louis, yawning, "this is a rebellion." 
"Sire," said the attendant, "it is a revolution." 
Next day he hastened to the Assembly, prepared to yield 
everything. He entered the hall with no guard. " Gentle- 
men," said he, "you have been afraid of me. I put my 
trust in you." 

But the people had got over being fooled with smooth 
words. A national guard was raised in Paris, and every 
member wore a blue -and -white cockade. The king put 
one on his own hat, so as to be in the fashion. The peo- 
ple cheered mightily when they saw it on his head ; but 
that did not prevent their catching Foulon, one of his min- 
isters — who, like a noble of whom I have told you, had said 
that the people might eat grass if they were hungry — ty- 
ing a necklace of thistles round his neck and a bunch of 
grass round his waist, tearing him from the hall where he 
was going to be tried, dragging him down the stairs, now 
head down, now head up, hanging his half dead body to a 
lamp-post, and marching round Paris with his bloody head 
on the end of a pike. The French were dreadfully in ear- 
nest by this time; all the piled-uj) passion of centuries was 
boiling over at once. 

In the country parts, where the peasants had borne such 
dreadful hardships from their feudal lords, the same things 
were done. Castles were stormed, gutted, and burned ; in 
many cases the owners and their families were massacred, 
I am afraid, with dreadful cruelties. In larger books than 
this, you will read touching stories of the rescue of ladies 
of noble family by faithful servants from furious peasants, 
who would be satisfied with nothing short of the extinc- 



,1 




STORMING THE B A STILE 

tion of the class which had oppressed them so long and so 
mercilessly. 

All this while the Assembly was trjdng to make new laws 
for France. It was found impossible to mend the old ones. 
A young man of whom you will hear more — his name was 
Robespierre — proposed to build from the ground up, and 
though he was a poor speaker, with a harsh voice and a 
bad manner, his head was so clear that the Assembly paid 
1<7 



274 [1789-1791 

a great dealof attention to him. The king seemed to be 
paralyzed ; he went about in a feeble way, asking advice 
of every one he met ; the queen was far more of a man ; 
she gathered foreign soldiers and young French noblemen 
round her, and made ready for the death-grapple that she 
saw coming. 

She was not the only woman who was at work. Bread 
was frightfully scarce in Paris. Women could not feed 
their children. One day, when they found there was no 
bread at the bakers', a crowd of women collected together, 
and, arming themselves with bludgeons, broomsticks, cut- 
lasses, hatchets, and pikes, marched to Versailles, under the 
lead of a vagabond named Maillard, to see the king. As 
they marched other women joined them, and so did some 
men. They were a sorry crowd, wild-eyed, bedraggled, 
dirty, coarse, foul-mouthed, many of them drunken, and 
most of them barefoot. What made them so terrible was 
that they were hungry. The king received a few of thetn 
and tried to pacify them with sweet words. He clasped 
one virago to his royal bosom. A regiment of life-guards 
endeavored to push them back without opening fire, but 
lost several of its men. At last General Lafayette, who 
had returned from this country and was the darling of the 
people, arrived at Versailles, got most of the women back 
to Paris, where bread had been provided for them, and dis- 
persed the mob of men who had followed them. He could 
only do this, however, by undertaking that the king should 
go back from Versailles to Paris and stay there. 

The king and queen started from Versailles at one in 
the afternoon. One hundred members of the Assembly fol- 
lowed them in carriages. In front of the king's carriage 
marched the remnant of the furious mob of women of the 
day before, waving pikes and singing horrible songs. Be- 
fore them straggled men carrying two heads of life-guards- 
men on the ends of pikes. Behind the king rode his guards, 
unarmed ; and all along the road Lafayette had scattered 
soldiers to guard his majesty against a sudden attack. 




DEATH OF GOVERNOR DELAUNAY, OF THE BASTTLE 

Considering bow Louis had fought against returning to 
Paris, where the mob frightened him, I am a little sur- 
prised at his address to the mayor when he reached the 

City Hall. 

"I return with confidence," he said, "into the midst of 

my people of Paris." 

There was one man in whom the king really had confi- 
dence. That was Mirabeau. Both king and queen saw 
him frequently in secret at night, and took counsel with 



276 [1789-1791 

him. It has been said that he was in their pay. I think 
it likely that he took money from them, because he was 
always wasteful and needy ; but I hope that what he did 
for them was prompted by sympathy and not bribery. 
The " tiger that has had the small-pox," as Mirabeau called 
himself, would naturally feel proud of protecting a king. 

Whatever his motive was, it was soon going to disap- 
pear, for Mirabeau was dying. The nearer death came, 
the more powerful he grew. In the Assembly he had 
always been a tower of strength — he was now master. 
Under the fire of his eye and the thunder of his voice the 
boldest quailed. His doctors told him he must die if he 
did not abstain from wine and work. He drank heavily 
that very day, and spoke five times in the Assembly. On 
the 20th of April, 1791, he bade a friend open the window 
of his room. 

" I am going," he said, " to die to-day. Sprinkle me 
with flowers, fill the air with music and perfume, so that I 
can sink quietly into everlasting sleep." 

They gave him a soothing potion, his head dropped to 
one side, and he was gone. 

When he was dead, every one declared that he was the 
only man who could have pulled France through the pres- 
ent agony. Everybody went to his funeral. All Paris put 
on mourning and wept. He was buried in the Pantheon 
as a national hero. But a few years afterward, when some 
one found his letters to the queen, showing his tender sym- 
pathy for the poor woman in her sorrow, the angry mob of 
Paris called him a traitor, tore open his tomb, and scattered 
his ashes to the winds. 



Chapter XLII 

THE KING'S FLIGHT, IMPRISONMENT, AND DEATH 
A.D. 1191-1793 

The king returned to Paris, to find himself a prisoner. 
The Assembly believed that he was plotting with foreign- 
ers to put down the French people by force of arms — which 
was, in fact, the case — and kept watch of him accordingly. 
It had intercepted despatches of his and of the queen's, 
which showed that, while he was professing to love the peo- 
ple, he hated them in his heart, and was on\y waiting for 
an opportunity to set his foot on their neck once more. A 
few hot-headed members of the Assembly said as much in 
their speeches ; their more prudent colleagues kept silent, 
but they thought all the more. I am not surprised that 
Louis came to believe that his life was not safe at Paris, 
and resolved to run away. But it was not in him to be 
honest or truthful. While he was making his plans for 
flight, he told every one that he would stay in Paris to the 
bitter end. He assured General Lafayette that he would 
remain where he was ; he told his minister, who told the 
Assembly, that he had never dreamed of leaving France. 

Nevertheless, in the night of June 20th, 1791, disguised 
in the gray coat and periwig of a valet, with the queen and 
his sister, his children and their governess, he left Paris in 
a travelling-carriage from the Porte St. Martin. He had 
for escort three life-guardsmen disguised as servants ; and 
a stanch friend of the queen's. Monsieur de Bouille, had 
stationed parties of troops on the road which he was to fol- 
low. When the next morning dawned, he Avas far on his 
way to Flanders. 

At nine in the morning the Assembly met. Almost 



278 [lYQi-ivga 

everybody knew of the king's escape, and nobody seemed 
to mind it. The Assembly discussed the event quite calm- 
ly, and simply sent for the ministers of state, and directed 
them to take their orders from it instead of from the king. 
In their secret hearts the Assemblv thouo^ht it was a sjood 
riddance. He was so false a creature that they foresaw 
they might have to deal with him roughly some day. As a 
matter of form they directed Lafayette, who commanded 
the National Guard, to have him pursued and brought back. 
But privately they all hoped that he had got so good a 
start of his pursuers that he would be able to cross the 
border before he could be overtaken. He was, in fact, at 
Chalons, on the Marne, when Lafayette's troopers started, 
and was pushing on as fast as fresh horses could draw him. 

But it was not the fate of this man to be saved. At St. 
Menehould, a few miles from Chalons, Louis put his head 
out of the carriage and was recognized by Drouet, the son 
of the postmaster and a strong Republican. Drouet took 
horse, rode madly through the night to Varennes, on the 
little river Aire, and warned tlie National Guard that the 
king was coming, on his way to join the enemies of France. 
Bouille, the queen's friend, had some hussars in the place, 
but they refused to fight against the people. When the 
king's carriage came lumbering up and crossed the river 
bridge, it found the road blockaded by a carriage which 
Drouet had upset on purpose; a crowd of men, with loaded 
muskets and torches flaring in the black night, barred the 
way. 

Said the captain of the national guard of Varennes: 
" You are the king ?" 

Said Louis : "I am not. I assure you that you are mis- 
taken." 

But others came up who recognized Louis from his like- 
ness on silver coins, and he had to confess that he was the 
king. 

While the crowd were discussing what should be done 
with him, Lafayette's aide-de-camp, who had ridden faster 



nei-iYGS] 



279 



than the leaders of the Assembly intended, appeared at 
Yarennes with orders to bring back the royal family to 
Paris. The people of Yarennes were sorry for the king 
and queen, whose grief was touching. A baker's wife 
would have hid them, if she could. But the National 
Guard was firm ; Lafayette's guards were approaching ; at 
eight in the morning the carriage, with six fresh horses, 
started on the return journey to Paris. 




ilOUsL. Ui' THE JACOBIN CLUB 

The weather was hot. The carriage was eight days on 
the way. When it entered a town or a village the people 
turned out in a body to see it pass. Some jeered, but more 
were sorry, seeing what was coming. When the king en- 
tered Paris, he saw the walls placarded with a notice post- 
ed by order of the Assembly : 

" Whoever applauds the king shall be whipped ; who- 
ever insults him shall be hanged." 



280 • [1791-1793 

On its way to tlie Tuileries the carriage passed through 
immense crowds of men and women, who were as silent as 
statues. At the palace Lafayette received the royal party, 
and on leaving them politely inquired, 

" Has your majesty any orders for me ?" 

To which Louis replied, 

"It seems to me that it is for me to take orders from 
you, not you from me." 

In effect, that very morning the Assembly had suspend- 
ed Louis from his functions of king and had placed a 
guard over his person. A few days afterward it decided 
that the king could not be punished for trying to escape, 
and he was restored to liberty and allowed to play at be- 
ing king a little longer. Having settled this and framed 
a constitution which the king accepted — as a matter of 
fact, he had no choice — it adjourned, without day, on Sep- 
tember 30th, 1791, not one single member having won 
either fortune, or place, or title, or power by his thirty 
months' work. 

Then followed another Assembly which met on the fol- 
lowing day, October the 1st. But all this shifting of pow- 
er from one set of men to another set of men led to so much 
confusion that it was hard to say who ruled France or 
Paris. There was the king, who, with his ministers, gave 
orders ; there was the Assembly, which gave orders, and 
sometimes pretty sharp ones; there was the National Guard, 
with Lafayette at its head, which was ordered about a 
good deal by the others ; there was a city government of 
Paris, which was called the Commune and at times had a 
great deal to say ; and there were four or five clubs — the 
Jacobins, the Feuillants, the Cordeliers, and the like — which 
began to give more orders than all the others put together. 
Nobody knew which of these to obey, and none of them 
could keep the Paris mob under control. 

On June 20th, 1792, a mob of thirty thousand men, 
women, and children, bearing muskets, pikes, knives, and 
swords, and sharp pieces of iron on the end of bludgeons, 



1791-1798] 



281 



waving flags and singing, burst into the Assembly Cham- 
ber, and with noise and threats crossed over to the Tuileries, 
where the king was, broke down the doors, and set Louis 
on a stool which stood on a table, so that all might see him. 
At the head of the mob were a butcher and a brewer. 

Said the butcher to the king : " Cry, 'Long live the na- 
tion !'" 




STORMING THE TUILEKIES 



"Long live the nation !" echoed the king. 

"Prove it, then," roared the butcher, holding out a red 
cap of liberty on the top of a pike. 

Louis meekly put on the cap. 

The brewer insisted that the little prince should also put 
on a red cap. When he had done so the great crowd went 
away as they had come, having killed nobody this time. 

A number of nobles, unable to endure the loss of their 
old privileges, had shaken the French dust off their feet 



282 [n9i-m3 

and gone into Germany, where they found friends among 
the kings and nobles of that country, and botli together 
agreed to invade France and wipe the French mobs off the 
face of the earth. All over Europe kings made common 
cause with Louis. Eighty thousand soldiers, fifteen thou- 
sand of whom were French nobles and their followers, as- 
sembled at Coblentz to march on Paris. When the news 
came the Assembly ordered the church-bells to ring the 
tocsin, minute-guns were fired, the walls were covered with 
placards — "The country is in danger" — and every man 
was summoned to enroll himself in a military company. 
While this was going on, and every man's blood was up, it 
was known that the queen was writing letters to the enemy 
and clapping her hands over the news of his coming. 

On August 10th the mob rose again and once more 
marched into the Tuileries. They were more noisy than 
before, and when they saw the king they called him names 
and shook their fists in his face. He was in an agony of 
irresolution and terror till, with his wife, son, and sister, 
he ran away through a howling mob to the Assembly Hall. 

" I am come," said he, " to prevent a great crime." 

Almost as he spoke a rattle of musketry was heard. 
The mob had come to blows with the Swiss sfuards. 

"Upon my honor," cried the king, "I ordered the Swiss 
not to fire." 

Of these Swiss there were seven hundred and fifty, in or 
about the palace ; at the sight of blood the mob, which 
numbered thousands, became like wild beasts. Not a sin- 
gle guard or servant escaped. All were butchered ; their 
blood covered the floor so thickly that it was hard to walk 
through the passages of the palace without slipping. 
Wherever a servant or a Swiss was found, he was jabbed 
to death with pikes, his body thrown out of window and 
stripped and robbed by thieves in the court-yard below. 

Meantime the Assembly placidly continued its debates, 
while howling and roaring crowds surrounded the building 
in which it sat, and every- now an4 then a band of ruffians^ 



1191-119'S] 



283 



in red caps, wooden shoes, and with pikes in their hands, 
poked their heads into the hall to see if raerabeis were at- 
tending to their work. In the reporters' gallery, where 
the heat was stifling and the quarters cramped, the king 
and queen and dauphin, starting whenever the sound of 
musketry came from outside, and panting with terror, 
staj^ed all that day and all that night ; when morning 
came they were all taken to jail, and for safety were locked 
up in that Temple prison which, as you remember, was built 
by the Knights Templar. 




SACKING THE KOYAL ARSENAL 

When the news of the king's arrest and of the slaughter 
of the Swiss reached the frontier, the Prussians and the 
absentee nobles broke into France. Lafayette and the sol- 
diers were as furious as the foreigners and the nobles them- 
selves against the Paris mob. The cry again arose that 



284 [lYDl-lVDS 

Paris was in danger. Then the mob grew more frantic than 
ever, and many people — priests, friends of the king and 
queen, nobles and their servants— were thrust into jail. On 
Sunday, September 2d, a whisper went round that the jails 
were not safe. In every prison the jailer took away the pris- 
oners' table-knives ; most of them sent their families away. 

You remember the procession of hungry, drunken, and 
bedraggled women at Versailles in 1789, That procession 
was led by a brutal vagabond named Maillard. This Mail- 
lard now collected three hundred ruffians like himself, fell 
upon carriages in which twenty -four priests were being 
moved from one prison to another, and murdered every 
one. Then he went from prison to prison and did the 
same thing everywhere. The jailer would be bidden to 
bring out his prisoners. In the horrible confusion which 
prevailed at that time, he would suppose that Maillard had 
authority for what he was doing and would obey. Then 
a form of mock trial would take place in the prison yard : 
Maillard would say — in a formula which had been agreed 
upon between him and his fellow-ruffians — " Take him to 
La Force" or "Set him at liberty." The prisoner would 
pass through the wicket, and, once outside, the gang, with 
sword and pike and hatchet, would make an end of him. 
In this way, on that 2d and 3d of September, about a 
thousand poor prisoners were done to death with savage 
cruelty by Maillard and his three hundred ; and five or 
six thousand more were murdered away from the prisons. 

Among those who perished was the beautiful Marie de 
Lamballe, the queen's friend and the sweetest woman at 
court. As she was going through the farce of a trial, a 
drummer -boy struck her down with a stick. She was 
quickly despatched with sword and knives ; her body was 
cut in pieces, and each piece carried around Paris on the 
point of a pike. 

Another cruel death was that of the Archbishop of Aries, 
an old, white-haired priest. They dragged him out into 
the yard. 



1191-1193} 



28i 



"Are you tbe arclibisbop ?'^ asked a ruffian, whose hands 
and face were smeared with blood. 

" I am," said the priest intrepidly. 

"Then take that," said the assassin, striking him on the 
head with his sword. Again and again he struck, till the 
old man fell ; then a pike was driven into his breast with 
such force that the iron head came off and put an end to 
his agony. 



r 




MASSACRE AT THE ABBAYE 



Governor Sombreuil, of the Invalides, was saved by his 
beautiful daughter, who, with j^iteous tears and entreaties, 
clasped her father round the neck and interposed her body 
between him and the pikes. 

" You want to save him ?" cried a brute. " Then drink 
the blood of the aristocrats !" and he handed her a can 
which he had filled with blood. 

She drank, and her father was released. 

When the news of the massacre reached people's knowl- 
edge, a cry of horror arose. The Assembly ordered the 
murderers to be put on trial The Commune, which had 



286 [1191-1193 

given money to Maillard and his gang, began to make ex- 
cuses. The clubs were silent. The army boiled over with 
rage. Lafayette threw up his command. It looked as 
though the infamous wretches who had committed the 
murders of September had wrecked the revolution, though 
they were only a handful and had no one behind them. 
The fact was that such confusion reigned that no one knew 
whom to obey, and things had got to grow worse before 
they could get better. 

The massacre took place on the 2d and 3d of September. 
On the 21st of the same month the Legislative Assembly, 
finding itself unable to restore order, made way for a new 
assembly, which was called the National Assembly. This 
new body abolished royalty in France. But it had yet to 
decide what was to be done with King Louis, who, with 
his family, was in the gloomy Temple prison, guarded by 
rough jailers, who thought it was patriotic to be rude to 
them. It spent many weeks in debating, and finally, on 
December 3d, it decided that it would try the king on a 
charge of treason to the nation. Robespierre wanted a 
sentence without a trial, but the convention thought that 
a king should have a trial like other persons accused of 
crime. 

At eleven in the morning of December 11th the mayor 
of Paris appeared at the Temple, and in a stern voice or- 
dered Louis to follow him. Their carriage was escorted 
by troopers, preceded and followed b}^ cannon. At half- 
past two the king entered the Assembly Hall. The presi- 
dent looked at him coldly, and bade him be seated and 
answ^er the questions that were put to him. He answered 
them all ; then he demanded the assistance of counsel. 
This was granted, but when the trial adjourned for the 
day he was not allowed to see his family. They went to 
bed in an agony of suspense, not knowing what had hap- 
pened. The trial lasted fifteen days ; and after that, for 
several days, the members of the convention debated. Ver- 
gniaud and the Girondins would have saved the king if they 



ivgi-i'zQS] 



287 



could have found a way to do so without failing in their 
idea of their duty to the people. Robespierre and the Ja- 
cobins were for his immediate execution, guilty or not 
guilty. Every one was curious to see how the Duke of 
Orleans, the king's cousin (who now called himself Philip 
Equality, in order to curry favor with the people), would 
vote on the question. 




PARTING BETWEEN THE KING AND HIS FAMILY 

The vote was taken on the 15th of January, 1793, and 
Louis was found guilty by 683 votes out of 749 members. 
Philip Equality was one of the 683. On the following day 
the vote was taken on the punishment which should be in- 
flicted. The voting began at half-past seven in the morn- 
ing and lasted all that day, all through the next night, 



288 . ^ [1791-1793 

and all the next day. When the vote was counted, Presi- 
dent Vergniaud rose and in a solemn voice declared, 

" Seven hundred and twenty-one votes have been cast. 
Two hundred and eighty votes are for imprisonment or 
exile ; seventy-two for death with long reprieves ; three 
hundred and sixty-one for death unconditionally. I there- 
fore declare that the punishment of Louis Capet is death." 

Philip Equality had sneaked up to the voting- desk, 
and, with the ashen hue of a coward on his cheek, voted 
death. 

All through the thirty - six hours' session ladies had 
been present, eating ices and oranges and drinking liquors. 
The gallery was full of people who brought bottles of wine, 
and kept betting on the course of the voting, and clapping 
and stamping when the vote pleased them. Many slept, 
and snored while the life and death of him wdio had been 
master of France were trembling in the balance. 

Louis was alone in his room when his lawyers entered to 
give him the bad news. Before they spoke he said, with a 
sad smile, 

"There is a legend in our family that, before a death, a 
lady dressed all in white appears to the one who is to die — 
I saw the white lady last night." 

The king was allowed to send for a priest and to see his 
family. His wife, his sister, and his son threw themselves 
into his arms, and for an hour and a half they spoke in 
broken whispers mingled with sobs. Their grief was so 
touching that the brutal guards drew off, so as not to over- 
hear what they said. 

At five in the morning of January 21st, all the troops 
in Paris were under arms, and in the dark morning fog 
drums were beating, bugles blowing, horses tramping, and 
heavy guns rumbling over the pavement. Louis rose early, 
shaved and dressed himself, heard mass, and took the com- 
munion. At half-past eight a tremendous clatter of hoofs 
and wheels resounded through the street on which the Tem- 
ple stood^ the 4ooi' of the prisQfl was flung open^ and SaO' 




EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI 



terre, the brewer, in gorgeous uniform and with a savage 
frown on his face, appeared in the king's room at the head 
of ten soldiers, 

" You have come for me ?" asked the king. 

" Yes," was the curt answer. 

A servant offered him his overcoat. 

" I shall not need it," said Louis. " Give me my hat. 
Now, sir " — to Santerre — " lead on." 

The carriage, which was surrounded by troops, took two 
hours to traverse the silent crowd in the streets, on the 
way to the place of execution. Louis conversed calmly 
with the priest and the brewer. When the carriage stopped 
he alighted, pushed back the guards who would have un- 
dressed him, threw off his coat, hat, and neckcloth, and 
opened his shirt ; then, with a firm tread, he mounted the 
scaffold and began to speak to the vast crowd of people. 
19 



290 [lin-ll9Z 

"I die innocent of the crimes which have been laid to 
my charge. I pardon those .who have caused my death, 
and I pray to God — " 

Just then Santerre signalled the drums to beat; they 
drowned his voice, and at the same time cries in the impa- 
tient crowd summoned executioner Sanson to do his duty. 
He and two assistants roughly seized Louis, threw him on 
the plank, shoved the plank under the groove, the blade of 
the guillotine fell, and the king's head rolled into a basket, 
while his blood spurted upon the boards and trickled upon 
the sawdust under the platform. 

Paris was uncomfortable all that day. Shops were closed 
and shutters put on the windows. People were horror- 
stricken. Even Republicans were shocked, and the king 
had still some friends who were furious. The day before, 
as Lepelletier, the President of the Parliament of Paris, 
was sitting down to eat his dinner at a restaurant, a life- 
guardsman approached him and asked, 

" Art thou Lepelletier, the villain who voted for the death 
of the king ?" 

"I am Lepelletier," said the president, "but I am not 
a villain." 

"Take that for thy reward !" said the man, plunging his 
sword into Lepelletier's side. 

Pieces of the dead king's clothes and handkerchiefs 
dipped in his blood sold at enormous prices and were 
treasured as relics. The members of the convention did not 
sleep soundly for many nights afterward. The wives of 
some of them swore they would never, never lay their heads 
on pillows beside theirs. 

France was probably unsafe as long as Louis lived. He 
could not resist the temptation to conspire with her ene- 
mies in order to keep the kingly power. Let us thank 
Providence that in this country there are no dangers which 
require such desperate remedies. 



Chapter XLTTT 

MARAT AND CHARI.OTTE CORDAY 

A.D. 1792-1'79?. 

Among the members of the convention who had sentenced 
Louis to death, some, such as the Girondists, whose leader 
was Vergniaud, did so from a sense of duty to their coun- 
try ; others, hke most of the Jacobins, acted from pure ha- 
tred of kings because they were kings. Of these Robes- 
pierre was the leader — I shall tell you of him in the next 
chapter ; but the most active and noisy of the king-killers 
was John Paul Marat. 

This man had been a monster from his birth. He was 
only five feet high, with a prodigiously large head and a 
hideous face. He had wild, glaring ejes and a mouth 
gaping like the mouth of a toad. He affected to glory in 
uncleanness, and went about in a ragged coat, a broken 
hat, boots without stockings, a pair of old leather breeches, 
and a dirty shirt which was always open, showing his yel- 
low chest. He lived in the midst of filth and squalor, not 
because he liked them, but because he wanted to show how 
poor and humble he was. 

At the time the troubles in France began he came to 
Paris from his native home, and started a newspaper which 
he called the Friend of the People. In this paper, which 
was shockingly brutal and indecent, he wrote articles day 
after day telling the people of Paris that all would be well 
with them if they killed nobles and priests enough. At 
first he thought about six hundred of the best people would 
do, but afterward he raised his figure to two hundred and 
seventy thousand; and sometimes he seemed to think that 



292 [1'792-1'793 

everybody should be killed except himself and the sub- 
scribers to his paper. 

Now, you know that a person of this kind would not 
give us any trouble at all. We should lock him up in a 
well-conducted insane asylum and keep him there. But, a 
hundred years ago, in France people were unsettled in 
their minds. They felt sore over the wrongs they had 
suffered and nervous about the trouble they were going 
through. There were numbers of people who were not 
sure whether there might not be some truth in Marat's 
bloody doctrines. When he kept preaching day after day 
that all would be well if throats were cat, people's reason 
was so shaken by the astonishing changes that were taking 
place around them that they didn't know but he might be 
right. So Marat came to be a most mischievous, as well 
as a most abominable, creature. 

He made so much noise that he became a poj)ular leader, 
and was appointed a member of the Paris Commune. It 
was he who put into Maillard's head the idea of massa- 
cring the prisoners, but his notion was different from Mail- 
lard's — he was for setting fire to the prisons and burning 
the prisoners alive. At one time Lafayette resolved to 
lock him up, but he escaped. Then the Assembly ordered 
his arrest, but Robespierre stood his friend, and he went 
free. Then he became president of the Jacobin Club, and 
it became very dangerous indeed to quarrel with him. He 
insisted on forcing his way into the Assembly and lectur- 
ing the members on their weakness in sparing lives. He 
was one of the loudest bawlers for the execution of the 
king. His speeches, like his articles, were all on one text, 
" Kill ! kill ! kill !" 

He was so mad on the subject of killing that one day, 
when he forced himself into the Assembly and disgusted the 
members till one of them proposed his arrest, he drew a pis- 
tol and threatened to kill himself then and there. You may 
perhaps regret that he was not allowed to fulfil his threat. 

Of course, as all the French had not lost their heads, an4 




CHARLOTTE CORDAY IN PRISON 



indeed as most of them, at bottom, continued to distinguish 
between right and wrong, there were many who loathed 
and despised Marat, without being on the side of the king. 
Among these was a young lady whose name was Charlotte 
Cord ay. 

She was a motherless girl who lived with an aunt in the 
prettj^ old town of Caen, in Normandy. Her people were 
poor, but Charlotte had been well-educated ; she spent days 
sitting by a fountain in the sunny square of her aunt's 
bouse, poring oyer books, and ti-ying to understapd the 



294 . [1792-1793 

Stirring times in which she lived. She had no girl friend, 
and tliough in secret she loved a young soldier named 
Franquelin, they vv^ere not engaged ; she had never told 
lier love. She was tall, with brown hair ; her face was 
pleasant, rather than beautiful ; she was very straight and 
strong, as the Norman girls generally are. This girl now 
resolved to give her life to rid France of the monster 
Marat. 

On a sunny morning in July, while the lizards were glid- 
ing along the top of the stone fences, and the big Norman 
cows were lying down in the fat grass after their break- 
fast, Charlotte came out of her home, handing a toy to a 
neighbor's child. 

" Here, Robert," said she, " this is for you. Be a good 
boy and kiss me ; you w^ill never see me again." 

At seven in the evening on July 13th, she left her lodging 
in Paris for the broken-down shanty in which Marat lived. 
She wore a plain white gown, with a silk scarf round her 
neck. On her head was a Norman cap, fastened with a 
broad green ribbon, and with a lace trimming which flut- 
tered in the wind. Her hair hung loose down her neck. 
In her dress she hid a long, sharp knife with a black 
handle. She walked with steady step and asked for 
Marat. 

He was in his bath, which was covered with a filthy 
cloth, spotted with ink. His head, shoulders, and right 
arm were all that could be seen of him ; in front of him a 
board covered with papers lay across the bath. When he 
heard Charlotte's voice, saying that she came from Caen 
and wished to see Marat, he shouted, 

" Let the citizeness in." 

As she stood by the bath he questioned her about Caen. 
She answered him simply, giving him tlie names of the 
Girondins who were there — people whom she loved and 
whom he hated. As he wrote down their names he ground 
his teeth and growled, licking his cruel lips, 

" They shall all go to the guillotine within a week." 



1792-1793] 



295 



At this she could no longer restrain herself. She drew 
the knife from her bosom and, with a strong, swift motion, 
drove the blade up to the hilt into Marat's heart, then 
drew it out and flung it on the floor. Marat gave one cry, 
"Help! help!" and died. His blood gushed in a flood and 
crimsoned the water in the bath. A servant-man, rushing 
in, knocked Charlotte down with a chair, and a woman who 
kept Marat's house jumped on her as she lay and almost 
stamped the life out of her. 





THE COAST OF NORMANDY 

Pretty soon the lodging was full of people, who glared 
at Charlotte. She — pale, silent, quite composed — stood mo- 
tionless ; when questions were put to her she said that she 
alone had killed Marat. She was hurried to prison ; on 
entering its door, with her hands tightly bound by cords 
and her arms griped by soldiers, her strength save way, 
and she fainted. 



296 • [1'792-1793 

By the time she was put on her trial she had recovered 
her coolness. To the president she said, 

" It was I who killed Marat." 

" Why did you kill him ?" asked the court. 

"Because of his crimes." 

" Who were your accomplices ?" 

" I had no accomplice." 

It did not take the jury long to find her guilty, and 
Fouquier Tinville, who was public prosecutor, pressed for 
immediate sentence. She had scarcely got back to her 
room in the prison when the executioner appeared, with a 
long red chemise and a pair of scissors in his hand. With^ 
the scissors he cut off her long hair — she begged one lock 
for a young artist who had taken her portrait in jDrison. 
Then she drew on the red chemise of the condemned over 
her other clothes, her hands were bound behind her back, 
and she was thrust into a cart without springs, which jogged 
slowly through the streets on its way to the square where 
the guillotine stood. Just as the cart started a thunder- 
storm with rain burst over Paris. But it did not scatter 
the rabble which swarmed in the street, and which fol- 
lowed the cart with groans and hisses. 

The women who had marched to Versailles a few years 
before were all there, and cursed Charlotte with their foul 
tongues. 

She stepped upon the platform as lightly as her pinioned 
arms and her long ehoiriise permitted. When the execu- 
tioner tore away the handkerchief which covered her neck 
ablush overspread her face. In an instant strong hands 
flung her down upon the plank, the blade fell, and from 
her neck a jet of blood spurted. The executioner, who 
was even more brutal than such people usually are, seized 
the head by the hair, held it up before the people, and 
slapped the poor dead cheeks with his open hand. 

That night the rabble of Paris said that the friend of 
the people had been avenged. 

A hundred years have passed since then, and see how 



1'792-1'793] 



297 



public opinion has changed ! To-day, Marat is accounted 
one of the worst scoundrels who ever figured in history ; 
and Charlotte Corday, murderess as she was, has taken a 
place among the heroines who have ennobled humanity 
and given their lives to save others. Statues, paintings, 
and poems commemorate her deed, while France would 
like to forget that Marat ever lived. 




HOTEL DB YILLK 







ROBESPIERRE 



Chapter XLIV 
EOBESPIERRE 
A.D. 1792-1794 

In order to give you a consecutive story of Marat, 1 
passed over events which happened before his death. I 
must now turn back to them. 

There was confusion enough in Paris while the king 
lived; it grew worse after his death. Kot only did the 
political clubs try to govern the country, but forty-eight 
new bodies, called sections, which were not by any means 



1792-1794] 299 

composed of the wisest or best men in Paris, unLlertook the 
same thing, and in the Assembly itself two parties arose 
which contended for the mastery. One of these was called 
the Girondists. Their leader Vergniaud I have already 
mentioned. He was a pure man, honestly seeking the 
freedom and happiness of France, and without a thought 
of himself or ill-will for any one. He was a sublime ora- 
tor, who could stir men to fury or melt them to tears ; 
but he was hardly strong enough for those rough times. 

The other party was called the Jacobins. Their leader 
w^as Robespierre. He Avas a lawyer — a small, lean man, 
w^ith a mean face, but a dandy in his dress. He wore fine 
clothes and what ladies nowadays would call a corsage 
bouquet. He was not like Vergniaud. He Avas cold, cal- 
culating, cruel, and was always thinking of himself and 
ready to strike down every one wdio stood in his way. He 
told every one that he was the most virtuous person in 
France, and, as virtuous people were pretty scarce at that 
time, he gained a good deal of credit in consequence. 

Another leader of the Assembly was Danton. He was 
like Mirabeau in looks — a big man, with a shaggy head of 
hair and a roaring voice. He Avas violent and blood- 
thirsty, but clear-headed. His motto Avas : "Boldness! 
boldness ! boldness !" Robespierre at first liked him, then 
grew jealous of him; you Avill see how the flowered dandy 
disposed of him in the end. 

Meantime all Europe had formed a coalition against 
France to punish the Frencli for the execution of their 
king. They had gathered a great army on the Rhine, and, 
with the help of the nobles who had left their country and 
Avere called Emigrants, proposed to march on Paris. They 
were held in check by French armies under Lafayette and 
Dumouriez. But after a time these generals became so 
disgusted with affairs at Paris that they thrcAv up their 
commands. Lafayette entered Germany and was thrown 
into an Austrian prison. Dumouriez Avent to England. 
The Assembly ordered every able-bodied man to enroll 



himself in the army, and appointed a Committee of Public 
Safety to look after traitors at home. A revolutionary 
tribunal was also appointed to try persons suspected of 
disloyalty to the nation, and it was specially provided that 
it should not be bound by the rules of law. A bad plan, 
as you will see. It was easy for a Jacobin to say he sus- 
pected this or that person, and thus the prisons were kept 
pretty full, though the tribunal did its best to thin them 
out by finding almost everybody guilty. 

The tribunal began by sending General Ciistine and a 
number of citizens of Rouen to the guillotine on a charge 
of disloyalty. Two new members were then added to the 
Committee of Safety, Billaud Varennes and Collot d'Her- 
bois, than whom there were no wickeder or more blood- 
thirsty villains in France. They insisted that a reign of 
terror should be established to cow people. 

All of these measures were opposed by the Girondists, 
who did not like the guillotine and had no love for blood. 
But they were fiercely insisted on by Robespierre and his 
followers. The Jacobins even went so far as to demand 
that the Girondists themselves. Queen Marie Antoinette, 
who was still in the Temple prison, and the Duke of 
Orleans, who called himself Philip Equality, should be 
brought to trial as enemies of the people. 

The poor queen had languished in her jail ever since the 
king's execution, but for some time she had the comfort 
of the society of her daughter and her sister-in-law, Eliza- 
beth. Her son, the young dauphin, had been taken from 
her. She was now removed to the Conciergerie prison, 
and placed in solitary confinement in a damp, ill-smelling 
room. A man who had been a robber mounted guard 
over her and was in her room day and night. Her clothes 
were worn out and in rags, her stockings were in holes, and 
she had no shoes. Both she and the dauphin had been 
intrusted by the Assembly to the guard of a wretch named 
Hebert, who had been ticket-taker at a theatre and had 
stolen the receipts. 



1792-1794] 301 

She was brought to trial on October 14th, 1793, just ten 
months after the execution of her husband. She was only 
thirty-eight years old, but her hair was snow white, her 
beauty was gone, her color had faded, her cheeks were 




MAKIE ANTOINETTE 

sunken. She had not been a loyal queen to France, but 
any man with a heart in his bosom would have pitied her 
now. It did not take long to find her guilty. She dressed 
herself all in white, cut oS. her hair with her own hands, 
gave her poor, thin wrists to the executioner to bind 
them behind her back, and went to her rest meekly and 
bravely. 



302 [1792-1794 

I may as well tell you here of the fate of her son, the 
daupliin. He was locked up in the Temple prison with his 
father and mother, as you remember, on August 13tb, 
1792, when he was seven years old. On July 3d, 1793, he 
was dragged from his mother and shut up by himself iu a 
room which was full of rats. He was a timid, nervous 
child, and trembled when a rat scurried past him. For 
two years he lived in that room, with no one to play with, 
no one to speak to. His bed was never made, his windows 
were never opened, his underclothes were hardly ever 
changed. He had no books to read and no light at night. 
Under this treatment both his body and his mind gave 
way. He sat the livelong day in a chair, and when his 
keeper, a cobbler named Simon, who shamefully neglected 
and abused him, came in and spoke to him, he would make 
no answer. At last he lost his mind altogether, and it was 
a happy release when he died, at ten years of age. 

Having started iu on their reign of terror, the Jacobins 
followed it up. Just a fortnight after the queen's death 
they arrested twenty-two Girondists, with Vergniaud at 
their head, and held them for trial on a charge of treason. 
They were the flower of France, the wisest and purest 
men of the Revolution. But they were accused by Robes- 
pierre of having conspired against the republic, and, of 
course, they were convicted. When they left their prison 
in the morning, they promised their fellow prisoners to let 
them know how they had fared. They kej^t their promise 
by singing the verse of the Marseillaise hymn — 

"AlloDS, enfans de la patrie, 
Le jour de gloire est arrive." 

(Come all ye sons of France, 
The day of glory's come at last.) 

That night they spent in cheerful conversation. When 
day dawned, Vergniaud took his watch, scratched his in- 
itials and the date on the case, and sent it to a young lady to 
whom he was tenderly attached, and whom he had intended 




THE DAUPHIN IN THE TEMPLE 



to marry. They were borne in five carts to the guillotine. 
As they stepped on the platform, all, with one accord, sang 
the Marseillaise. The chant grew feebler and feebler as 
singer after singer fell on the fatal plank. At last only 
Vergniaud was left. With his last breath he sang — 

" The day of glory's come at last." 

The Jacobins murdered women as willingly as men. 
They sent to the guillotine Madame Roland, one of the 
most beautiful and gifted women of the day, but a Giron- 
dist. She died bravely, saying, 

" O Liberty ! What crimes are committed in thy name !" 
Then followed poor old Madame Dubarry, who strug- 
gled and fought with the executioner ; Madame Elizabeth, 
sister of Louis the Sixteenth, who died bravely ; and a host 
of other women, many of whom were young and beauti- 
ful, and whose only fault was that their husbands, or their 
brothers, or their fathers had been nobles or stood in the 
way of the Jacobins. 



304 [1792-1Y94 

As for the men, tbe executioner wore himself out in put- 
ting them to death. Danton was put on his trial, was not 
allowed to produce witnesses, and was executed ; so was 
Camille Desmoulins, one of the brightest members of the 
convention, who had been an intimate friend of Robes- 
pierre, and was the husband of one of the loveliest and 
sweetest women of that day ; so was Lavoisier, the great 
chemist ; so was Bailly, one of the best and purest French- 
men who ever lived. The spies of the Committee of Public 
Safety hunted down every one who had been a noble or a' 
priest, or who was opposed to bloody murder; they, their 
wives, their children, and even their servants, were sent 
to prison, and in three or four days many of them were 
guillotined. The guillotine was the great show of Paris ; 
some days as many as fifty persons had their heads cut off ; 
when the number fell as low as twenty, the rabble grum- 
bled that they were cheated. 

Men made jokes about the awful blade which severed 
so many necks ; they called it the Little Tickler. Vile 
women used to take their knitting and watch the execu- 
tioners from chairs which were kept for them, from day to 
day, round the platform on which the terrible instrument of 
death stood. They kept count of the victims by means of 
knots in their worsted. I think that many of the people 
of Paris at that time had gone mad. 

What happened at the capital happened elsewhere. 

A broken-down actor named CoUot d'Herbois, who was 
a friend of Rpbespierre and was called the Tiger, was 
sent to Lyons. He arrested hundreds of priests, nobles, 
and other people, old and young men, women, and even 
young children ; and, finding that he could not kill them 
fast enough with the guillotine, he made them stand in 
long rows and shot them down with artillery. After each 
discharge of the great guns soldiers went round to finish 
with their bayonets those who still breathed. When three 
women begged of him the lives of their husbands, he had 
them tied to posts near the execution ground, so that their 



1792-1'794]. 



305 



husbands' blood should spurt on them. This brute was 
afterward exiled to Cayenne, and killed himself by drink- 
ing a bottle of brandy at a sitting. 

At Nantes, the murder business was in the hands of a 
man named Carrier. He, like Collot d'Herbois, found the 
guillotine too slow ; he used to put two or three hundred 
priests, nobles, and others, with women and children, into 
boats ; when the boats reached deep water in the river 




EXECUTIONS OF THE GIRONDISTS 



Loire, plugs in their sides were pulled out, and the boats 
sank to the bottom with their living contents, the hatclies 
being battened down. Sometimes Carrier would entertain 
his friends by giving them a show of men and women tied 
together in pairs so tliat they could not move their arms 
or legs, and thrown into the river ; he and his friends 
thought it capital fun to watch their helpless struggles. 
He lived to be guillotined. 
20 



306 [1'792-1794 

Another savage Jacobin was Coiithon. He was Robes- 
pierre's bosom friend, and sent many a good man to the 
guillotine. His time came at last. When he ascended 
the platform he could not be laid on his face, as he was 
frightfully deformed ; the executioner had to lay him on 
his side, so as to cut his head off. All these wretches, as 
you see, got their punishment in this world. 

I need not tell you that when these horrors were going 
on business was greatly disturbed. People did not pay 
taxes. The government could not borrow money ; it issued 
paper-money called assignats, which very soon fell so much 
in value that a loaf of bread cost twelve dollars of our 
money. The butchers' and grocers' stores were robbed, and 
after a time they only opened their doors to those they 
knew ; but still numbers of people starved. Everybody 
was afraid of his neighbor, for fear of being denounced as an 
enemy of the nation. The women were in great distress, 
for the churches were closed, and at the instigation of Ro- 
bespierre the Christian religion had been abolished by law. 

But this could not go on forever. The people of Paris 
sickened at last of the daily butcheries. Shop-keepers be- 
gan to put up their shutters when the dreadful carts passed, 
and in the St. Antoine suburbs sturdy workmen frowned 
and scowled when Robespierre's wonderful virtue was 
spoken of. He had put his leading rivals out of the way. 
But new rivals were springing up all around him, and in 
the Assembly and among the people a feeling of loathing 
for never-ending bloodshed was growing. He stayed away 
from the Assembly for a month to see if it would subside. 
When he returned, in his blue coat and brass buttons, nan- 
keen breeches and blooming nosegay, members affected not 
to see him. Those who did set eyes on him glared at 
him. No man took his hand. You see, there was hardly 
a member there who had not lost some loved one through 
this man. A murmur rose, and swelled and swelled and 
swelled, until at last it became a roar from right to left 
and gallery and floor, 



1792-1794] 



307 



"Arrest the traitor ! Down with the tyrant ! Down 

with him !" 

He rose, staggered, turned red and white, tried to speak, 
but his tongue was too dry to make sounds. He could 
only froth at the mouth in his rage. A member shouted, 

" It is Danton's blood that is clioking you." 




I^IEMORIAL CUP AND SAUCER OF THE GUILLOTmE 

In such wild tumult as even that tumultuous Assembly 
had never known before, amid howls and groans and 
shouts and shaking of iists and tearing of hair, Robes- 
pierre was declared to be an outlaw, and was sent to be 
tried by the very court he had created to convict innocent 
men of being traitors. To prevent a rescue by his Jaco- 



J^08 [1792-1794 

bin friends, an intrepid soldier named Barras patrolled the 
streets. Brought to bay at last, with rage in his heart 
and curses on his tongue, Robespierre drew a pistol and 
shot himself in the face. But the wound was slight ; he 
was put on a board, and carried to the rooms of the Com- 
mittee of Safety, and laid on a table. He still wore his 
blue coat, nankeen breeches, and white stockings ; he kept 
stanching the blood from his face with bits of paper, until 
a surgeon dressed the wound. 

It was four in the afternoon when he was taken to the 
guillotine. Soldiers pointed him out wdth the points of 
their sabres ; men hooted, women hissed and spat as he 
passed ; the executioner made him stand up and roughly 
tore the bloody bandage from his jaw. He shrieked with 
the pain, while from the crowd round the guillotine a 
gray-haired woman, all in black, sprang forth and, stretch- 
ing a skinny arm, cried shrilly, 

" Descend to hell, villain, covered with the curses of 
every mother in France !" 

This time when the knife fell every one breathed more 
freely. In a week from the time of his execution the 
guillotine went out of general business, and ten thousand 
people who were in prisons for political offences were set 
free. A weight was lifted off every soul, and the people, 
eager to show their disgust with the crew which had ruled 
them so long, took Marat's remains out of his grave in the 
Pantheon and threw them into the gutter. 

During the twenty -two months that Robespierre had 
held the chief power, one thousand eight hundred and 
sixty-two persons had died by the guillotine in Paris ; and 
this is besides those who had been put to death by his 
agents at Lyons, Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and in La 
Vendee. Ingenious writers have tried to explain that 
Robespierre's motives were good, and that he really be- 
lieved that he was doing right. I think myself that he 
wanted to climb upon a throne by a bloody ladder, and 
that the happiness of his country never troubled him at all. 



Chapter XLY 

THE LAST OF THE ASSEMBLY 

A.D. 1794-1796 

After the fall of Robespierre, Paris had a rest. Fou- 
quier Tinville, who had sent so many innocent people to 
their death, and his friend Carrier, followed him to execu- 
tion, but the dreadful processions of carts to the guillotine 
were stopped. 

This, however, was only a breathing-spell. There was 
no power anywhere strong enough to preserve order, and 
people had not yet settled down to quiet lives after the 
excitement of the Reign of Terror. The Assembly claimed 
to rule France, but the Jacobin Club also claimed to have 
a good deal to say about that, and the forty-eight sections 
of Paris were quite sure that they ruled that city. Among 
the three, fights were constantly breaking out. 

Paris and most of the other French towns were in dire 
straits. Owing to the turmoil which had prevailed all 
over the country the fields had not been properly tilled, 
and grain was scarce. The Parisians were j^ut on short 
rations — first, a pound of bread for each person per day, 
and next, only two ounces. The winter of 1794-95 was 
extremely cold ; all the rivers froze over so solidly that 
in Belgium, where war was raging, a regiment of cavalry 
captured a fleet of war-ships which were frozen in the ice. 
When the Seine froze over no fuel could be got into Paris, 
and the poor people suffered terribly from cold. 

While they were shivering and starving another class 
of people, who had kept out of the trouble of the past five 
years and who still had money, and who had made money 
by speculating in assignats or buying church lands or sup- 



310 



[1794-1Y96 




plying the armies, were leading gay lives to console them- 
selves for the anxieties they had undergone. They dressed 
splendidly and gave fine entertain- 
ments. The men wore their hair in 
rolls, huge cravats, short coats with 
long tails, vast waistcoats, and tight 
trousers ; they all carried thick sticks 
— not for sliow. They were called 
"gilded youth," " incredibles," " mus- 
cadins." The ladies wore long gowns 
with high waists and no hoops ; their 
hair was done up in fillets and bound 
with a single ribbon ; on their feet 
they wore sandals fastened with rib- 
bons which crossed each other over 
the ankle, and stockings with fingers 
for each toe, on which it was fashion- 
able to wear rings. The men wore 
powder in their hair, the ladies not. 
The churches had opened again, and 
people could pray at the altars if they wanted to ; the 
theatres remained closed. 

All the men, and especially the young men, of this bet- 
ter class were opposed to the Jacobin Club ; and when 
the Jacobins began in their old way to hector and bully 
the Assembly, and to trample the laws under foot as a par- 
cel of savages might have done, the gilded youth resolved 
to see how hard they could hit with their thick sticks. 

They did not arm themselves with guns or pikes or 
knives ; but whenever the Jacobins pranced through the 
streets, calling for the life of this good man or that good 
man, and ranting and roaring, the gilded youth began 
hitting them on the head with their thick sticks. The 
Jacobins were so much surprised at finding that the gen- 
tlemen, as they sneeringly called them, could fight, that 
they thought there must be some mistake. They went 
back to their club, called out their biggest bullies, and sal- 



HAT WORN IN 1T95 




A REPUBLICAN ADDRESSING THE PEOPLE 



lied forth again. Again the gilded youth stepped np with 
smiles, and the thick sticks and Jacobin heads renewed 
their acquaintance. Then the Jacobin Club got some tried 
soldiers to head its forces, and went again to battle ; but 
it was of no use ; as you may suppose, the gilded youth 
had more grit and pluck than murderers and brawlers, and 
the Jacobins went howling back to their club, with cracked 
crowns and bloody noses. Once tbey put a lot of horrid 
women at their head and marched into the Assembly Cham- 
ber, to threaten and bully and swagger in their old way. 
These were the same women who had marched to Ver- 
sailles, and had afterward sat round the guillotine. When 
the gilded youth heard that the Jacobins had invaded the 
Assembly, they quickly turned out and marched at the 
double-quick, sticks in hand. The Jacobins, who by this 
time knew those sticks very well, did not stop to argue, 
but scurried out as fast as the doors would let them ; the 
ladies were disposed to linger, but for them the gilded 



312 [1794-1796 

youth had brought whips which they plied steadily and 
smartly, till the sweet creatures ran out, crying that a man 
must be a brute to strike a woman. Then the Assembly 
abolished the Jacobin Club, and there was an end of that 
nuisance. 

But the sections remained. There were forty-eight of 
them, and all agreed to follow the lead of the Lepelletier 
section. They had forty thousand men in arms under their 
orders, and it was simply impossible for the Assembly to 
carry on the business of governing France, so long as 
they continued to dictate to it and threaten it and defy 
its authority. One of the two — either the sections or the 
Assembly — must go to the wall. 

The Assembly sent for Barras, who had commanded the 
troops when Robespierre was arrested, and asked him would 
he undertake to put down the sections ? He said he would, 
if he might choose his second in command. 

The man he chose was a captain of artillery, twenty- 
five years of age — a small, thin man with long black hair 
and an olive complexion. He had made a name for himself 
by showing the French how to take Toulon from the Eng- 
lish. But he had not made a fortune. He was very poor 
and knew hardly anybody. He used to walk the streets of 
Paris in a gray overcoat buttoned to his chin, a round hat 
pulled over his eyes, and a black cravat badly tied. There 
was something in his face which made people turn round 
to look at him ; for he was Napoleon Bonaparte. 

He made his plans swiftly. He secured all the field guns 
near Paris, and planted them so as to command the long St. 
Honore street, the cross-streets, the quays, and the bridges. 
His infantry he distributed so that at the point of conflict 
they could pour in two shots to the section's one, besides 
raking the cross-streets. When his men were all in place, 
and all his guns Avere just where he wanted them, at half- 
past four in the afternoon he mounted his horse, and gave 
orders to open fire upon the troops of the sections, who 
were on the steps of the church of St. Roch. 



1794-1796] 



313 



His fire was so straight and so rapid that the section 
men could not stand it. They began to drop one by one, 
then they broke and ran down the streets toward the river. 
At every crossing infantry poured volleys into them ; at 
the squares, quays, and bridges cannon opened on them 
with grape, mowing them down by scores. By six o'clock 
every member of the section's array was either dead or 
wounded or hiding in his house. All that night the big 
guns thundered with blank cartridge, and the section men 
shivered. Napoleon had resolved they should not forget 
that night. And they did not. The sections followed the 
Jacobins into history. 

Thus freed from its enemies, the Assembly adopted a 
new constitution, under which France was to be governed 
by a house of ancients, like our Senate of the United States, 




NAFOI^BOJf ^0Js[APAIiTB 



314 [1794-170G 

an assembly, like our House of Representatives, and tive 
directors, who were to do the work of our President. Whicli 
done, the Assembly adjourned, not to meet again, having 
done well for its country and laid the foundation for a 
French republic. 

Paris again had peace, and becan.e once more the live- 
liest city in Europe. There never were such gay parties 
or such joyous society as in the winter of 1*795-96. Charm- 
ing women swarmed. Among them was Madame de Stael, 
who was not a beauty, to be sure, but who was clever and 
witty and knew everything from high politics to milli- 
nery ; Madame Tallien, who had the face of an angel and 
the figure of a- nymph ; Madame Recamier, who had feet 
and hands so small and white and finely shaped that they 
were the talk of the town ; Madame Beauharnais, who 
could turn any man's head, though she had to keep her 
mouth shut, because her teeth w^ere bad, and false teeth 
had not then been invented ; and others whose bright eyes 
and rosy cheeks and merry laughter — you may be sure 
they had forgotten all about the guillotine— made life in 
their society a dream of Paradise. At the feet of these 
beauties knelt '' incredibles," many of whom afterward 
proved that they had good stuff in them — among others 
brave young Hoche, w^ho had risen in one year from pri- 
vate to general, and who was handsome as a young Apollo ; 
and the young man with an olive complexion, piercing 
eyes, and a grave face, who began to be known as General 
Bonaparte. 

You remember that when the States-General undertook 
to mend the laws of France, they found it could not be 
done. Almost everything was bad, and it was necessary 
to build anew from the ground up. The several assemblies 
which met one after another had done their best to pull 
down and build up afresh. And some of the changes must 
have been puzzling. 

They changed the names of the years. Instead of dating 
from the birth of Christ, as Christian nations do, they 



n94r-ll96] 



315 



dated from the foundation of the republic, as the Romans 
had from the foundation of Rome; thus the year 1793 
became year 1. Tlien they changed the names of the 
months. The 21st of September became New Year's Day, 




MADAME DE STAEL 



and the thirty days following were called the Vintage 
Month. Then followed a month which was called Chilly 
Month, one called Frosty Month, then in succession months 
called Snowy, Showery, Windy, the month of Buds, of 
Flowers, of Meadows, of Harvests, of Heat, and of Fruits. 
Sunday was abolished ; and instead, every tenth day was 
observed as a day of rest, Avhen people went to the coun- 
try with their families for a holiday. I need not tell you 
that these changes did not last, and tliat the old names 
and the old divisions of time were soon restored. 



Chapter XLVI 
BONAPARTE 

A.D. ivee-nQQ 

You remember that when Lonis the Sixteenth was guil- 
lotined, all Europe declared war on France to punish her. 
Austria — of which country Marie Antoinette was a native 
— Prussia, Italy, Sardinia, Holland, England, and Spain — 
all joined forces to crush the nation which believed in free- 
dom and did not believe in kings. You might suppose 
that such a combination of enemies, falling upon France 
when she was distracted by dissensions and troubles of all 
kinds at home, would have made short work of her. But 
a brave nation, when driven to the wall, is capable of tre- 
mendous efforts, and is apt to produce great men. 

The army of Emigrants, Prussians, and Austrians which 
gathered at Coblentz just after the death of Louis the Six- 
teenth actually got into France, and was on the high road 
to Paris when it was attacked by Dumouriez and beaten 
back at Yalmy and Jemappes. Dumouriez soon afterward 
quarrelled with the government at Paris and left his army. 
It fell under the command of General Pichegru, who not 
only pushed the enemy farther back, but entered Holland, 
conquered it, and established a republic there ; but he also 
fell out with the Paris government, left his army, and was 
succeeded by Moreau, who made himself famous by plan- 
nino; the most skilful retreats that had ever been known. 

On the other side of the country the Bretons, who were 
then commonly called Yendeans, and who were wrong- 
headed and obstinate, took up arms to put down the repub- 
lic and restore the monarchy. They got help from England, 
and, as they had some exceedingly brave and intelligent 



1796-1799] 317 

leaders, they gave a great deal of trouble. Against them 
the government sent a soldier who v/as more famous for 
attacking than retreating — the General Hoche of whom I 
have told you. He penned up the Yendeans with a circle 
of troops that was like an iron chain, and beat the English 
till they were very glad to get on board their ships and 
go home again. 

The wars of France were managed by a war minister 
whose name was Carnot ; he was an ancestor of the pres- 
ent President of France. He resolved not to wait to be at- 
tacked, but to attack the enemy in their own countries. The 
army on the Rhine was ordered to strike into Germany ; 
General Hoche was told to invade Ireland ; to carry on 
the war in Italy against the King of Sardinia and the Em- 
peror of Austria, Carnot chose General Bonaparte. 

The trouble with all these wars was that France had 
nothing to carry them on with but pluck and skill : she 
had no money, no trained troops, no supplies. When 
Bonaparte crossed the Alps, in March, 1*796, his soldiers 
were in rags and barefoot ; the army chest was empty ; he 
had not a week's provisions with him ; some regiments had 
twice as many men as muskets. He stirred their courage 
with a little speech he made them : 

" Soldiers, you are ill-fed and almost naked ! I am going 
to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world, where 
you will find large cities and rich provinces, honor, glory, 
and wealth." 

Fifteen days afterward he again addressed them : 

" Soldiers, in a fortnight you have gained six victories, 
taken twenty-one flags, fifty-five cannon, several forts, and 
fifteen thousand prisoners. You have gained victories 
without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made 
forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without bread!" 

Fancy how words like these stirred the troops' souls ! 
It was actually true that in less than three v/eeks he had 
overrun all Piedmont, and the Italians were at his feet. 
But he had the Austrians still to deal with. They were 



318 [1'796-1'799 

more numerous than the French ; they had strong forts 
to cover their rear ; they had experienced generals. The 
trouble with these generals was that they were slow and 
methodical and fought strictly according to the rules of 
war, while Bonaparte cared nothing for rules, but dashed 
here and there, as his genius prompted him, fell upon the en- 
emy's right when he should have fallen on his left, marched 
so swiftly that he alv>rays turned up before he was expect- 
ed, and, though his force was inferior to that of Austria, he 
so managed that at the point of battle he always had more 
troops than his enemy. As an old Austrian general said, 
"Here is an absolute boy who knows nothing of the mil- 
itary art ; now he is on our front, now on our flank, now in 
our rear. Such violations of plain rules cannot be justified." 

Justified or not, they led to victory. In a single cam- 
paign he swept the Austrians out of Italy ; Genoa, Milan, 
Parma, Leghorn, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, and ever so 
many other strong places fell into French hands ; and 
every place which Bonaparte took had to pay him a sum 
of money, to send him a quantity of supplies, and to yield 
to Paris a certain number of fine pictures. The Duke of 
Modena had to pay ten millions of francs, Milan twenty 
millions, the pope twenty-one millions, and other cities and 
potentates in proportion ; so that Bonaparte was able not 
only to feed and clothe his own army, but to send to the 
government at home large sums of money, besides some of 
the finest works of art in Italy. 

This was not accomplished without desperate battles. 
At a place named Lodi, on the river Adda, the French 
were on one side of the river, the Austrians on the other. 
There was a little bridge, one end of which the Austrians 
held with sixteen thousand troops and twenty guns, which 
were trained on the bridge. Bonaparte took six thou- 
sand grenadiers, and led them himself on a quick run to 
the bridge. The Austrian cannon opened fire and mowed 
down the front ranks. But Bonaparte, waving a flag ovei- 
his head, called on the rear ranks to follow him. Mad with 



1196-1199] 319 

excitemejit, they sprang forward in the teeth of the grape- 
shot, crossed the bridge, bayonetted the gunners at their 
guns, and scattered the sixteen thousand Austrians. In 
this battle alone forty-five hundred men perished — twenty- 
five hundred Austrians and tw^o thousand Frenchmen. At 
the siege of Mantua the Austrians lost thirty thousand men, 
ten thousand of whom were killed. Pretty bloody work ! 
But this was only the beginning. 

Sometimes Bonaparte won victories at less cost. One 
dark night an Austrian general met his forces at a place 
called Lonato. The Austrian, feeling confident that he was 
the stronger, summoned the French general to surrender. 
Bonaparte replied that he gave the Austrians just eight 
minutes to lay down their arms ; and they, fancying they 
had run up against the whole French army, did so at once. 

After having made peace with Austria and planted the 
Cisalpine Republic — as he called northern Italy — on a firm 
foundation, Bonaparte was eager to get home to Paris. He 
had been twenty months away. He had marched so many 
niiles, fought so many battles, and borne so much fatigue 
that he was worn out. He was so weak that he could not 
sit on horseback. His cheeks were hollow ; if it had not 
been for the fire in his eyes, he would have looked like 
a dying man. Before leaving Paris he had married Jo- 
sephine Beauharnais, a beautiful widow of thirty-three, 
who was six years older than himself. He loved her pas- 
sionately. Just before leaving Italy he wrote to her : 

"Soon thy husband will fold thee in his arms. Adieu 
for the present, adorable Josephine. Think of me often. 
When your heart grows cold toward me, you will be very 
cruel, very unjust. But I am sure you will always be faith- 
ful. A thousand and a thousand kisses." 

Three months afterward Bonaparte was in France. He 
had a splendid reception. All Paris turned out to meet 
him. The directors, who for some queer reason wore Ro- 
man togas, welcomed him from a raised dais, and all round, 
on seats arranged as they are at a circus, the greatest peo- 



320 



[1796-1V99 



pie in France sat and applauded, Bonaparte was plainly 
dressed and was modest in his manner. He said, 

"I bring you a treaty with Austria which insures the 
liberty, prosperity, and glory of the re|)ublic." 




THE DIIIECTOIIY. FROM A PIUNT OF TUE TIME 

Then he sat down, wbile the sky re-echoed the shouts of 
the people, and bands played triumphal airs, and batteries 
of artillery fired salutes. He was so shy and retiring, so 
small and unobtrusive, that no one would have taken him 
for a great conqueror who had just won sixtj^-seven battles, 
subdued a whole country, and taken a hundred and fifty 
thousand prisoners and six hundred heavy guns. 

But the brain of this shy and retiring soldier was full of 
great projects. He wanted to conquer Egypt. He said he 
wanted to do so in order to humble England. But as the 
English did not own Egypt, and as it was no manner of 
consequence to them who did, I think that Bonaparte was 
not sincere, and that his real object was to acquire glory 
for himself. He had read that Alexander the Great and 
Csesar had won glory in Egypt ; he w^nt:e4 to couple his 



119&-1199] 321 

name with theirs. So, in May, 1798, he set sail from Tou- 
lon, with a large army and a fine fleet, picked up Malta by 
the way, landed at Alexandria, and marched up to Cairo. 
There a battle was fought with the Egyptians, and the 
French won. Bonaparte worked his men up to enthusi- 
asm by telling them that, from the top of the pyramids — 
which they could see from the battle-field — forty centuries 
were looking down upon them. 

In order to please the Egyptians, Bonaparte put on a 
Turkish dress, went to the mosque or church, seated him- 
self, as the Turks do, cross-legged, and said prayers in the 
Arabic tongue, rocking his body to and fro, as the follow- 
ers of Mohammed do. 

But I do not observe that the Egyptians were much 
touched by his conversion ; and when the English, under 
Nelson, fell upon his fleet at Aboukir and destroyed it, 
they were more suspicious than ever. It didn't matter 
what they believed. Bonaparte held Egypt with a grip of 
iron, and when some of the chiefs annoyed him by hang- 
ing round his camps on their fleet Arab horses and killing 
Frenchmen, he sent a flying squadron to punish them, and 
every night a dozen asses were driven into Cairo with sacks 
on their backs. When they reached the market-place the 
contents of the sacks were dumped, and they proved to be 
heads of Arab horsemen. Bonaparte invaded Palestine, 
and beat the Turks there ; he took no rest until the French 
were masters of the country from the Holy Land to the 
cataracts of the Nile. 

You will be surprised to hear that he received no news 
from France for a whole year. The Mediterranean was 
patrolled by English fleets, and it was only by pure acci- 
dent that, after being fifteen months in Egypt, Bonaparte 
heard that the French had been driven out of Italy, and 
that the greatest confusion reigned in Paris. He said noth- 
ing to his oflicers, but took ship, and landed at Frejus, in 
France, in October, 1799. 

He found everything in frightful disorder at Paris. The 
21 



322 [1796-1799 

five directors were quarrelling among themselves and were 
despised by the people. Bonaparte called them to task. 

"What have you done with the France I left you? I 
left you peace ; I find war. I left you victories ; I find 
defeats. I left you millions ; I find starvation. What have 
you done with my brothers in arms? They are dead." 

Three directors were cowed and resigned ; the other two 
Bonaparte locked up. Then, on a day which the French 
always remember by the name of the eighteenth Brumaire, 
he sent a company of grenadiers with fixed bayonets into 
the hall of the Assembly, drove the members out, locked 
the doors, put to death the Republic of France, and re- 
placed it by a one-man government — the man being Bona- 
parte. 

He called his government a consulate, there being three 
Consuls — he the first and Sieyes and Ducos the second and 
third. You will understand that the second and third Con- 
suls were for show, and that the First Consul was the gov- 
ernment. Bonaparte said he had been compelled to make 
himself Consul by the intrigues of members of Assembly 
to restore the monarchy, and by the endeavors of the Eng- 
lish to bribe the assemblymen to betray their country. I 
dare say there were a few assemblymen who would have 
liked to see the king back ; and it is possible that Mr. Pitt, 
who hated France and the French Republic, may have giv- 
en a few pieces of gold to knaves to create trouble. But 
the real secret was that neither the Directory nor the As- 
sembly knew enough of the business of governing to hold 
France well in hand ; and that by their side there stood an 
ambitious young man, who not only knew how to master 
France, but was resolved to do so. 




THE THREE CONSULS. FKOM A MEDAL 



Chapter XLVII 



THE FIRST CONSUL 
A.D. 1799-1804 

When Bonaparte became First Consul he set himself 
two tasks — first to restore order, and then to make France 
the first power in Europe. At the same time he purposed 
to become the absolute ruler of France. It was to be great 
and orderly, but it was not to be trusted with freedom. 
Whether or no he believed in his heart the French were 
not fit to be free, he resolved to be on the safe side and to 
keep in his own hands supreme power in great things and 
small. He purposed to do a good and useful thing, and 
to do it in such a way that it should turn to his personal 
advantage. 

There was no money in the treasury, and the Directory 
had been unable to raise any. Bonaparte levied wise taxes, 
which were cheerfully paid. He put the government credit 



324 [1799-1804 

on a sound basis and started up trade and industry. He 
taught people to throw the wretched old assignats into 
the fire and to do business with real money. He reformed 
and boiled down the laws into one code, which is in force 
to-day and has been copied in a dozen countries — among 
others, in our own State of Louisiana. He kept as good 
order in the French cities as he had in his camps; if any 
one, Jacobin or other, disturbed the peace, the police quickly 
laid him by the heels and taught him a lesson. He found- 
ed a number of colleges, which are flourishing to-day. He 
reopened the churches and paid the priests for preaching 
and celebrating mass. You must keep these good works in 
mind when you blame him, as you cannot help doing, for 
making himself a military despot. 

To give France time to recover after ten years of war- 
fare, he made peace with the rest of the world. Spain, 
Portugal, the pope, Naples, Turkey, Bavaria, Russia, were 
quite willing to sign treaties of peace. Austria hung back 
until Bonaparte beat her armies terribly at Marengo, and 
Moreau did the same thing at Hohenlinden — then she laid 
down her arms ; and last of all England agreed to live in 
friendship with her old enemy. 

Then the First Consul tried to reform the morals of the 
French, which needed mending. You can easily understand 
that, under the example of the Regent Orleans and Louis 
the Fifteenth, men and women had learned to lead bad 
lives. Things got worse during the dreadful confusion of 
the early years of the Revolution, when there were no more 
marriages, and the leading men boasted that they respected 
nothing. Bonaparte now set an example of leading a clean 
life. He and his wife lived at the Tuileries when they were 
in town, and at Malmaison when they went to the countrj^ 

Josephine, her daughter, and their guests and friends 
rose when they pleased. They breakfasted together at 
eleven, and spent the afternoon in chat, reading, or driving. 
Bonaparte got up at five or six, went at once into his office, 
and spent the day there — when there was no review — re- 



1799-1804] , 325 

ceiving visits, reading despatches, and giving directions to 
his ministers and officers. At six in the afternoon he 
dined with his family, who had not seen him till then ; the 
evening they spent together. He gave a dinner-party every 
ten days, to which two hundred people were invited, and 
he was careful to invite no one of bad reputation. When 
he took a holiday he made up a small party, consisting of 
his wife, her daughter Hortense, and a few of his favorite 
officers and their wives. The grand ladies of the old no- 
bility would not call on Josephine, and kept away from 
the Tuileries. In the country he amused himself by play- 
ing boys' games ; at the Tuileries he played chess or cards, 
but never for money. 

He was faithful to his old soldiers, and by little acts of 
kindness he won their hearts. Recognizing a drummer- 
boy at a review, he asked, 

" Was it you who played the drum at Zurich ?" 

" Yes, General," said the boy. 

" And was it you who saved your commander's life at 
the Weser ?" 

"Yes, General," answered the boy, flushing. 

" Then," said the First Consul, " the country owes you a 
debt. I make you a sergeant." 

Another day, as he was mounting his horse, a young 
man fell at his feet and handed him a paper. He was 
ghastly pale and trembled. The First Consul looked cu- 
riously at him and read his paper. Then, turning to the 
youth, he said gently, 

"You will tell your mother that she can draw a pension 
from the government as long as she lives ; and you, if you 
choose, can enter my army as an officer." 

The boy was the son of poor General Delaunay, who was 
Governor of the Bastile when it was taken; as you remem- 
ber, he had been murdered by the mob. 

But the brood of assassins of whom I have been sorry 
to tell you so much was not extinct. One night, as the 
First Consul was leaving the opera, an attempt was made 



326 [1'799-1804 

to stab him. On another occasion a barrel full of bombs 
was set on a cart, and drawn by an old horse toward the 
opera which Bonaparte was to attend. The intention was 
to explode the bombs as the First Consul passed. But the 
old horse got in the way of the escort. One of the troop- 
ers struck it a blow with the flat of his sabre, and it shied 
and put the machinery out of order; by the time this was 
rearranged the First Consul had passed, and the explosion 
killed no one but a few bystanders, among others a poor 
woman who kept a store and had run to her door to see 
the consul pass. 

A more serious attempt was made by Pichegru, Cadou- 
dal, and others, who, I am afraid, were set on by noble Em- 
igrants, I suspect that General Moreau, who was so gallant 
a soldier that he should have shrunk from such a plot, and 
several members of high families were more or less con- 
cerned in it. The police intercepted their letters and caught 
one of the conspirators, who betrayed the others. Moreau 
was exiled to this country. Pichegru was put in prison, and 
was found one morning dead in his cell, with marks show- 
ing that he had been strangled. Cadoudal was guillotined. 

Bonaparte was convinced that the Duke of Enghien, of 
the great house of Conde, who was an Emigrant, was in the 
plot. He seized him, in violation of law, on the territory 
of Baden and had him conveyed to Yincennes ; in that 
fortress he was put on his trial at two in the morning of 
the day after his arrival. He was sentenced to death. 
Without an hour's delay he was led by General Savary to 
the castle moat, where a platoon of gendarmes were post- 
ed and a grave had just been dug. He stood erect and 
intrepid, his back against the wall of the fortress, with a 
lantern on his breast to guide the soldiers' aim in that 
gloomy moat, which was like a still cavern in the sombre 
night. When his sentence had been read, he begged an 
officer to cut off a lock of his hair and send it to his wife. 
Then the command, " Fire !" and the brave young man 
fell forward on his face, 



1799-1804] 



327 



There was no reason why England and France should 
not have remained at peace, except that the two peoples 
had been educated to hate each other by their govern- 
ments. Bonaparte felt that so long as England flourished 
there would always be one nation to oppose his dream of 
supreme power in Europe ; the English regent and the 
English nobility felt that if their people had no foreign 
foe to fight they would want to reduce the power of the 
throne and the privileges of the nobility. A pretext for 
more fighting having been found, the war broke out in the 
old way. Bonaparte was master not only of France, but 
also of all Belgium, Holland, a slice of Germany, and all 
Italy north of Naples ; Spain was his ally ; the English 
had with them Russia, Austria, Naples, and Sweden. The 
whole continent was in the war on one side or the other. 

Before beginning it in earnest Bonaparte changed his 
title. Some time before he had been made consul for life. 
He now declared he would be Emperor of France and 
King of Italy, and the Senate — as the council of ancients 




EXECUTION OF THE DUKE OF ENGHIEN 



328 [1*799-1804 

was called — and the Assembly swiftly answered so he 
should. The pope w^as brought from Italy to crown him. 

It was done in the old church of Notre Dame. The 
church was splendidly draped in velvet, with B's all over it. 
The pope sat on a throne, with sixty bishops, as many 
generals, and judges, senators, assemblymen, and foreign 
ministers all around him. Bonaparte approached, with 
his marshals escorting him, and knelt at the altar. At a 
signal the pope took a phial of sacred oil and anointed 
the new emperor on the forehead, on the arms, and on the 
hands ; he girded the sword of state round his waist and 
placed the sceptre in his hand. The emperor, who had 
appeared to be uneasy lest the sacred oil should drip on 
his imperial mantle, seizing the crown, placed it on his 
head without stopping to observe a small stone which just 
then dropped from the ceiling on his shoulder, and would 
have been regarded as an evil omen by a Roman ; then, 
taking another crown, he placed it on the head of Jose- 
phine, who knelt before him and burst out crying. The 
pope blessed them both, and the whole audience broke out 
with the cry, " Long live the emperor !" while cannon out- 
side thundered deafening salutes. 

Six months afterward he was again crowned, at Milan 
in Italy. This time the crown which he set on his head 
was an old iron crown, which was said to have been used 
by the emperors of the ancient empire of the West ; all 
the great church dignitaries and civil oiRcers of Italy, 
with a swarm of French officers and foreign ministers, 
watched the ceremony. When it was over Napoleon 
touched the crown and said in Italian, " God has given it 
to me ; let him beware who touches it." 

You may perhaps think that this soldier, who made him- 
self emperor by war, was impious in imputing his usurpa- 
tions to God. He had two crowns set on his head — one in 
Paris and one in Milan ; whoever put them on, you will 
not find they stuck there when the time came for them to 
fall off. 




.jiyiiiiiiiijilliiiijiHiiulllliilili^liiliiiiiiUHiiil'i 




NAPOLPON J 



Chapter XLVIII 

THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON 

A.D. 1804-1807 

In choosing which of his foes to attack first Napoleon 
selected England, because it was the richest among his 
enemies and had the smallest army. He collected his 
troops on the coast of the Channel, round the town of 
Boulogne. There were so many of them that he is said to 
have placed one hundred thousand in line at one review. 




THE COAST OP BOULOGNE 



332 [1804-1807 

There is no doubt that he had a large force of infantry, 
cavalry, and gunners, all veteran soldiers, and some three 
thousand broad boats to ferry them over to England. 
You know that there were no steam-boats in those days ; 
Kapoleon's boats were sail-boats, and they could not de- 
fend themselves against frigates. To cross the Channel in 
safety it was necessary for him to get control of it, and 
hold control at least for one whole day. To accomplish 
this he ordered his naval captains to entice as many Brit- 
ish ships as they could away from the coast of England ; 
and he directed his best admiral, Villeneuve, to attack and 
beat and sink the remainder. 

Unluckily for him the English fleet was commanded by 
an exceedingly skilful and daring sailor, whose name was 
Nelson. He saw through Napoleon's plans, left ships enough 
near home to hold the Channel, and with the rest went in 
sharp pursuit of the French fleet. One day, near a point 
on the Spanish coast called Trafalgar, he came up with it, 
cut it in two, and sank and battered out of shape so many 
French ships that at the end of the fight it was no good 
for anything. So the English kept their mastery of the 
Channel, and Napoleon did not dare to put to sea with his 
three thousand boats. 

While he was grinding his teeth with rage news came that 
the Austrian army, eighty thousand strong, had marched 
from Vienna to invade France, and that a hundred thou- 
sand Russians were only two or three marches behind 
them. Like lightning he turned his back to England and 
made for the new foes. He seized every carriage and every 
horse in northern France ; and the troops, in coaches, wag- 
ons, carriages, trucks, phaetons, hay- carts, and on horse- 
back, were hurried to the valley of the Danube, before the 
slow, lumbering Austrians imagined they had left the Chan- 
nel. Napoleon seemed to need neither sleep nor rest. He 
was everywhere at once. So swiftly did he move that he 
wrapped his men round the first Austrian army corps of 
thirty thousand men before they knew he was near and 



lS04-lg07j 333 

made them all prisoners ; then he shut up the next army 
corps of thirty-six thousand men in Ulm and, by threaten- 
ing to open fire, forced them to surrender in order to save 
their lives. In a month he made an end of the Austrian 
army without firing a shot. 

Another army rose up at Vienna and joined the advance 
corps of the Russians. He marched to meet them at a lit- 
tle Moravian village called Austerlitz. They were more 
numerous than the French, but they had no general who 
knew his business. The Emperor of Russia was in com- 
mand, and he placed his men so that Napoleon cut his army 
in two — as Nelson had done to Yilleneuve's fleet — and over- 
came each half separately. It was the 2d of December 
and bitter wdnter weather. The ground was covered with 
snow and ice. In retreading, the Russians crossed some 
frozen ponds. Napoleon fired his big guns in the air so 
that the balls fell on the ice and broke it, and thousands of 
poor soldiers, overloaded with their guns and their knap- 
sacks, were drowned. 

This was enough for the Russians this time. Those who 
survived the battle hurried home as fast as they could. 
And with Francis of Austria, whom he received at an open 
bivouac, protected from the wind by an old mill-shed. Na- 
poleon made peace, on condition of getting a large slice of 
territory and a great deal of money. 

There is a story — I hope it is true — that on his return 
to Vienna he met a convoy of wounded Austrians, imme- 
diately alighted from his carriage, took off his hat, and 
called to his oflScers, 

" Honor the brave !" 

He was not always so thoughtful for the wounded and 
the dying. 

What was passing in his mind you may perhaps guess 
from his private letters to the Empress Josephine. He 
wrote to her after Austerlitz : 

"I have beaten the Russian and Austrian armies com- 
manded by the two emperors. I am a little fatigued. I 



334 [1804-1807 

have slept eight days in the open air, though the nights 
are severely cold. To-night I shall get two or three hours' 
sleep in a castle. Adieu, my love. I am pretty well and 
eager to kiss you. Not one letter from you since you left 
Strasburg." 

He had no sooner got back to Paris than he showed 
what his real purpose was in carrying on the wars to which 
he had been invited by the kings of Europe. Some years be- 
fore, you remember, France had helped to establish a repub- 
lic in Holland ; this Napoleon now overthrew, and planted 
in its place a monarchy with his brother as king. Louis 
was a silent, morose man, whom the Dutch hated. 

Then he made his wife's son, Eugene Beauharnais, vice- 
roy of northern Italy, and, to round out his dominions, he 
took Venice from Austria and put it under Eugene. 

Finally he sent an army to Naples to drive out the worth- 
less king who reigned there. He was a miserable creature, 
who was always making treaties and breaking them, and I 
am not sorry he was upset. But it startled Europe when 
Napoleon made his brother Joseph King of Naples in his 
stead. People began to say that the Bonaparte family 
were covering a good deal of ground — especially when 
another of them, Jerome, was made King of Westphalia. 

Prussia became so uneasy that she agreed to join the 
Russians in another effort to put down the " Corsican up- 
start," as Napoleon was called. He met their armies at a 
place called Jena, and the Prussians lost 12,000 men killed 
and wounded, 15,000 prisoners, and 1200 cannon. This 
was ten months after the battle of Austerlitz, and was quite 
enough for the Prussians. Those of them who could made 
the best of their way home. The King of Prussia ran away, 
and Napoleon entered Berlin in October, 1806. 

Then he turned on the Russians and fought a number 
of battles with them in the spring of 1807, at Eylau, Fried- 
land, and other places, and his good fortune was such that 
he won all the battles, and at each one Russia lost men 
and guns and glory which she could not spare. At last 



1804-1 SOY] 335 

the Emperor Alexander got tired of this business and sent 
to Napoleon to see if they could not arrange a peace. 

The two emperors met on a big raft, anchored exactly 
in the middle of the river Niemen, near the little town of 
Tilsit. On the raft a small pavilion had been built with a 
table and chairs and maps for the two emperors. The offi- 
cers of their suites stood outside or rowed about in their 
boats. To decorate the pavilion the shops of Tilsit had 
been stripped of all their fine silks and cloths. Here the 
two monarchs, with the King of Prussia, met day after day 
from the 25th of June to the 7th of July, 1807, and they 
finally agreed on a treaty, by which Russia got nothing, 
Prussia lost half her subjects and nearly one half of her 
territory, and Napoleon got everything that he wanted. 
You will probably think that he was as skilful at making 
treaties as he was at fighting battles. 

The Emperor of Russia dined with him every day, and 
you may be sure that Napoleon did not spare expense to 
give him fine dinners and rich wines. The Russian did 
not see till long afterward how he had been hoodwinked ; 
but the poor stupid King of Prussia saw plainly enough 
what was to be his fate, and he sent for his wife, Louise 
of Prussia, who was the most beautiful woman in Europe, 
to try to get better terms from Napoleon. The emperor 
was struck with her marvellous beauty and could not take 
his eyes off her ; he told her she was the queen of loveli- 
ness ; but when she tried to get him to be more forbearing 
with Prussia, his face grew hard as stone, and he said 
"No" in a way which showed that he meant it. 

He had made himself ruler of France, Italy, Belgium, 
Holland, and nearly half of Germany ; and he did not pro- 
pose to let a pretty woman talk him out of a foot of land. 

I need not tell you that this great empire had not been 
won without hard fighting and much hardship. You have 
heard of the battles ; now hear how Napoleon lived during 
these campaigns. He wrote to his brother Joseph, 

^' The oificers of my sta^ have wot undressed for two 



336 [1804-1807 

months, and some not for four months. I myself have not 
had my boots off for a fortnight. We live in snow and 
mud, without wine or brandy or bread, on meat and pota- 
toes, making long marches and counter-marches without 
ceasing. Our wounded have to be carried a hundred and 
fifty miles in sleighs, through the bitter cold, before they 
reach a hospital." 

But neither the fatigues of his marches nor the priva- 
tions he endured were enough to occupy his mind. When 
he was fighting battle after battle he was constantly plan- 
ning some new thing for Paris. He laid down new rules 
for the collection of taxes. He gave points for articles in 
the newspapers. He sent directions to Paris for the manu- 
facture of boots and shoes, saddles and baggage-wagons. 
He directed the theatres what pieces to play and what 
actors and actresses they should engage. He read all the 
principal books and sent money to the authors of good 
ones. He started a number of schools and directed what 
they should teach. One of his schools was for the daugh- 
ters of soldiers killed in the service. About this one he 
was very particular. He wrote : 

" Women have weak minds, therefore they should be 
taught religion. I want the pupils of this school to be vir- 
tuous rather than agreeable. They should learn a little 
medicine, dancing (but not ballet-dancing), reading, writ- 
ing, ciphering, and needle -work. They must make their 
own chemises, stockings, dresses, and caps, and also know 
how to make clothes for their children when they come to 
have any.** 




MEDAL OF NAPOLEON, KING OF ITALY 



Chapter XLIX 

FRANCE UNDER NAPOLEON 
A.D. 1807-1809 

After the treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon soon found himself 
back in France once more, with no wars to carry on for 
the moment, for the French and the English could not get 
at each other. He then bent his whole mind to improving 
the condition of Paris and France ; when you see how well 
he succeeded you will feel sorry that he wasted so much 
genius in fighting and angering foreigners by setting his 
relations over them as kings. France had never been as 
prosperous nor the people as well off as he made them. 

He put into his schemes of public improvement the 
same energy that he had put into his campaigns. Under 
his orders ten canals were dug to connect rivers. He cut 
roads over the Alps and through Brittany. He opened 
seaports and built wharves. He gave splendid rewards to 
silk weavers, woollen spinners, and makers of beet-sugar. 
He established all manner of schools — art, military, and 
naval schools, ten law schools, six schools of medicine, 
twenty-nine colleges, and common schools in every town. 
He managed his money-affairs so well that there was al- 
ways plenty of money in the treasury, though people did 
not complain of being overtaxed ; there was always work 
22 



338 [1807-1809 

for every one "who wanted work, and no boy grew up in 
ignorance if he cared to learn. You will not be surprised 
to hear that the French were contented ; and, though good 
men deplored the want of freedom, the masses of the peo- 
ple thought the empire a fine thing. 

He made Paris more splendid than ever. He built the 
Madeleine, and the Yendome column out of cannon taken 
from the Austrians and Russians (it was pulled down by 
the Commune in 1870, but has since been rebuilt) ; he fin- 
ished the Louvre and the Pantheon ; he built the Arch of 
Triumph and the Arch of the Star. He supplied Paris with 
water, put the streets into good repair, and established a 
police force which made it safe for every one to go where 
he would at any time of night. He put a stop to street 
begging and established poor-houses all over France. His 
system of laws was the best in Europe, and he saw to it 
that his laws were obeyed. 

Notwithstanding these services to France the members 
of the old nobility, who had emigrated when the republic 
was declared, and who had since come creeping back to 
pick up some remnant of their old estates, would not have 
anything to say to him. They kept away from the court, 
and their wives and daughters would not call on the em- 
press, Napoleon laughed at them and their titles ; and, 
partly to spite them and partly to reward his old soldiers, 
he began to create dukes very fast indeed. Almost every 
general who had done good service in the wars was made 
a duke or a prince, or at least a marshal of France, and 
had a fat salary given him to enable him to sustain his 
rank. 

These changes of titles were embarrassing. A man who 
had been a marquis under Louis the Sixteenth became a 
plain citizen under the republic ; now any one who hap- 
pened to distinguish himself in the army ran risk of being 
made a duke. Most of the new dukes were of humble 
birth and had won their titles by gallant deeds in war 
under Napoleon's eye. 



ISO'Z-ISOQ] 341 

All these people had to dress splendidly in order to en- 
courage industry. The court dress for men was a coat of 
red watered silk embroidered in gold ; the embroidery was 
in imitation of branches of olive, oak, and laurel. They 
wore black cravats and boots coming up to the knee. The 
ladies wore round their necks tulle ruffs, with gold or 
silver points. The dress was embroidered in gold, but no 
one but a princess could wear embroidery all over her 
dress ; on ordinary ladies' dresses the embroidery was lim- 
ited to four inches at the bottom of the skirt. On com- 
mon occasions ladies wore dresses of cambric and muslin, 
which were then very expensive ; white cambrics were not 
made in France, but were smuggled from England, and 
the emj)eror was angry when he saw one of the ladies of 
his court dressed in them. Much time was spent by ladies 
in dressing their hair: on the day of the coronation some 
ladies had their hair dressed at two in the morning, and sat 
in their chairs until the ceremony began at nine. The court 
ladies wore splendid diamonds, and with these it was the 
fashion to dress in black or dark-colored velvet. When 
Napoleon's sister, the Princess Borghese, was presented at 
court after her marriage, her head, her neck, her ears, and 
arms were loaded with diamonds. 

As the English had command of the sea France could 
get few goods from foreign countries. Napoleon told the 
ladies to drink Swiss tea instead of tea from China, and 
French chicory instead of coffee from Java or Brazil. He 
paid so much attention to beet-sugar that to this day the 
French use more of it than they do of cane-sugar. 

He was very friendly w4th the clergy and saw to it that 
they were not molested. But when a priest was intolerant 
be had no pity for him. A ballet-dancer happening to die, 
the priest of her parish refused to give her Christian burial. 
A couple of days afterward Napoleon put in his news- 
paper the following little notice, which he wrote with his 
own hand, 

*^ ^\\^ puratQ of St. Roch, in temporary f orgetf ulness of 



342 [1807-1809 

reason, has refused to pray for Mademoiselle Chameroy, 
and to admit her remains within the ehnrch. The Arch- 
bishop of Paris has suspended the cure of St. Roch for 
three months, to remind him that Jesus Christ commands 
us to pray even for our enemies, and to teach him that 
superstitious practices, begotten in times of ignorance, or 
created by overheated zealots, degrade religion by their 
foolery." 

When his work was over the emperor was always ready 
for a frolic. He went to balls, parties, and masquerades, 
and loved to intrigue the guests. He used to dress up 
some one in domino and mask, and give out that this was 
the emperor. His double used to go through the rooms, 
copying the emperor's walk and manners, and the real 
emperor would take delight in treating him with a famil- 
iarity which shocked the guests. For Napoleon was a 
stickler for dignity. No one ever joked with him. When 
he entered a room, every one rose, and no one, not even 
ladies, could sit down in his presence. He was playful 
himself, and was fond of pinching the ears and noses of 
the ladies he liked ; but no one could venture to be playful 
in return. 

I am sorry to add that he was cruel to those who vent- 
ured to criticise his actions. Madame de Stael, who, I 
think, was rather a tiresome person, found some fault with 
him ; upon which he exiled her from France and kept her 
in exile for ten years. She had a friend, Madame Re- 
camier, who called to see her before she left. For this 
Madame Recamier was also sent into exile, though she was 
the most beautiful woman in France, and had been the idol 
of Paris in the days of the republic. For the benefit of 
men who talked so as to give him uneasiness. Napoleon re- 
vived the old system of the Bastile, and locked them up 
for long periods of time without giving them a trial. He 
was the most suspicious person in France. He kept swarms 
of police spying on people, and then, fancying that he was 
not being faithfully served, he set others to spy on the spies. 



1807-1809] 343 

These wretches, in order to earn their pay, made a practice 
of revealing to the emperor plots which they made up ; he 
was thus kept in constant alarm. 

An enormous athlete, armed to the teeth, slept across 
the door of his bedroom, and he would rarely eat anything 
that had not been cooked in his own kitchen. On one oc- 
casion, when he accepted an invitation to dinner, he sud- 
denly called his body-servant as the soup was being served, 
and bade him fetch a loaf of white bread and a bottle of 
wine ; he would touch nothing else. 

With all his common - sense he was superstitious, and 
used to consult fortune-tellers. He believed in destiny. 
At a battle he saw a soldier duck his head as a round shot 
came flying that way. 

" My friend," said Napoleon, " you are putting yourself 
to needless trouble. If that shot is not intended for you, 
you may just as well stand up straight. If it is destined 
for you, it will find you out though you should bury your- 
self a hundred feet below the surface of the earth." 

Though he had been constantly under fire throughout 
his wars, Napoleon had never been hit until the skirmish 
of Ratisbon, some time after the battle of Austerlitz. 
There a spent ball struck his heel and flattened itself 
against the boot. If it had struck four feet higher, the 
emperor's career might have ended then and there. The 
accident impressed him painfully. He said that his star 
must be setting. 



Chapter L 

JOSEPHINE 
A.D. 1809-1810 

I^Tapoleon was in the middle of his work in France, 
when, once more, war broke out between France and Aus- 
tria. He had to call out his old soldiers again, tear down 
the Danube valley, and fight battle after battle with the 
Austrians, until he finally overcame them at a place called 
Wagram. He entered Vienna, pulled down its walls, and 
once more made peace. But he then saw plainly enough 
that the kings intended to give him no peace, partly be- 
cause he was not of them, but was a mere man of the 
people, and partly because they saw there were no bounds 
to his greed for power. There was one way in which he 
might get them to accept him as one of themselves — that 
was by marrying into a royal family ; then, perhaps, he 
thought they might bear with him. 

He had a wife already, as you know — a loving and af- 
fectionate wife — the Empress Josephine, who was then 
forty-six years old. She had two children by her first 
husband. General Beauharnais ; none by Napoleon. She 
had been by turns happy and miserable as Napoleon's 
wife. He was sometimes loving ; then he neglected her 
for some lady of the court, and she endured agonies from 
jealousy. When she scolded and cried he explained that 
he was not like other men, and was not subject to the 
same laws as they. He told Josephine that, being an em- 
peror, no one could question his actions. In reality, he 
despised women. He thought they were inferior creatures, 
who were put into the world for the pleasure of men. 

Josephine was warm-hearted and tender, but not very 




JOSEPHINE, WIFE OP NAPOLEON I 



wise. She was passionately attached to her husband, but 
she never became friendly with his family. The emperor's 
sisters hated her and tattled to their brother about her 
weakness for jewels and her willingness to take presents. 
Her chief sorrow was that she had given her husband no 
son. She said to a friend, 

" You can have little idea how much I have suffered 
when any one of you has brought a child to me. Heaven 
knows that I am not envious, but in this one case I have 
felt as if a deadly poison were creeping through my veins 
■when I liav^ looked upoii the fvesb a^d rosy cheeks of 21 



346 , [1809-1810 

beautiful child, the joy of its mother and the hope of its 
father. I know, I know, that I, who have given my hus- 
band no child, shall be driven in disgrace from him whom 
I love more than my life." 

ISTapoleon took time to consider the matter. He argued 
that if he got rid of Josephine he might marry the daugh- 
ter or the sister of a king and be received at once into 
kingly society ; he might get a young and blooming wife, 
instead of a lady of forty-six ; and, above all, he might get 
a son of his own to succeed him when he died. I don't 
think he troubled himself about how Josephine would feel 
at parting from him, or whether he might not break her 
heart. Other people's hearts did not concern him much. 

Having thought it all over, he sent for Josephine, and 
told her bluntly that the interests of France required him 
to turn her out. She was not surprised. She had read her 
fate in the faces of the people at court, who knew what 
the emperor intended to do. She meekly bowed her head 
and answered, 

'' I was prepared for this, but the blow is none the less 
mortal." 

No time was lost. On December 15th, 1809, the Coun- 
cil of State was informed by Napoleon that he intended to 
divorce his wife. He had no complaint to make of her. 
She had done nothing wrong. He professed to love her 
with all his heart. But he pretended to think that France 
required a lineal heir to the throne, and his courtiers pre- 
tended to believe him — as though the country would go to 
ruin if the Bonaparte dynasty expired, and as though he 
had no nephews to carry it on. 

On the day after, Napoleon with all his court assembled 
at the Tuileries. They were all splendidly dressed. Na- 
poleon entered wearing a hat with drooping plumes ; he 
folded his arms across his chest, as one who has nerved 
himself to a great sacrifice. All the great officers of state 
stood round the room. By a side-door, Josephine, all in 
white aud with a face as wWte as her gown, came in with 




MAKIE LOUISE OF AUSTRIA, SECOND WIPE OP NAPOLEON I 



her son Eugene and her daughter Hortense. In the centre 
of the room stood a small table, on which there was an ink- 
stand of gold and a gold pen. In front of the table had 
been set an arm-chair in which the empress took her seat. 
A court official read a deed of separation ; Josephine took 
an oath that it was her free act and deed, then, removing 
her handkerchief from her eyes and dipping the gold pen 
into the golden inkstand, she signed her name. Leaning 
on her daughter's arm, she left the room. Next morning, 
in a closed carriage drawn by six horses, she left the Tuil- 
eries forever and drove to Malmaison. 

Napoleon cried a good deal in public after she was gone. 



§48 [18O9-1810 

He said she was the best woman in France. He did not 
know what he should do without her. But he soon found 
out. For while the people of Paris, who loved Josephine 
for her kindness to the poor and for her grace and sweet 
teniper, were murmuring over her disgrace, the emperor 
despatched a confidential oflicer to St. Petersburg to ask 
for the hand of a Russian princess. The Romanoffs are a 
proud family ; they declined the honor politely, but very 
firmly. Then the officer went to Vienna and asked the 
emperor would he accept Napoleon as a son-in-law ? Fran- 
cis was not so particular. He replied, 

" With all my heart." 

And accordingly, on March 10th, 1810, not three months 
after he had turned Josephine out of the Tuileries, Napo- 
leon was married by proxy to Marie Louise of Austria, 
whose great-grandfather was the brother of the Marie An- 
toinette who had been guillotined in Paris. 

She was nineteen years old — amiable, sweet, and stupid. 
Her hair was light, her eyes blue, her hands and feet small, 
her figure graceful. She had never seen Napoleon till he 
met her on her way to Paris. The only remark she made 
was that he was better looking than she had expected. But 
she had been told that it was her duty to love him, and 
she was ready to do her duty as a well-bred girl should. 

On April 1st, 1810, the French marriage took place; and 
on the 20th of March following the emperor's son was 
born, in a room in which there were twenty-two people 
present to serve as witnesses. Never was a baby so grand- 
ly welcomed into the world. It had been arranged that 
if the child was a girl, twenty-one guns were to be fired ; 
if a boy, one hundred. When the twenty - second gun 
went off, all Paris burst into shouts, and the men threw 
their hats in the air for joy. That night every house in 
Paris was illuminated. At street corners bands played 
joyous music, bonfires were lit, rockets rose in the air, and 
fireworks were set off in the squares. The Parisian women 
laughed and cried in the ecstasy of their delight, and the 



Ig09-18l0j 



349 



men drank bottle after bottle of wine, as if a great happi- 
ness had befallen them. 

If they could only have foreseen ! That poor little boy 
was made King of Rome while he was still in long clothes. 
When he was five j^ears old he was taken to the court of 
his grandfather, the Emperor of Austria, to live, and there 







THE PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU 



he grew up — a sad, silent, sickly boy. He was not called 
King of Rome any more, but Duke of Reichstadt ; king 
or duke, he was always in low spirits, and with the brand 
of fate stamped on his face. He had no intimate friends; 
he loved to sit by himself and brood and mope, or to ride 
alone through the dark woods of Schonbrunn. Kind peo- 
ple at the court at Vienna tried to amuse him and to put 



350 [1809-1810 

a little life into him. Beautiful girls shot tender glances 
at him out of bright eyes. But nothing interested him. 
And at last, at the age of twenty-one, he died, having had 
as sad a life as the beginning of it was joyful. 

When he was a child he had a curious dislike for his 
mother, who, on her side, rarely cared to see him. There 
was one woman who pined in secret for a sight of his 
face, and who offered to humble herself before Marie Lou- 
ise if she might be allowed to fondle Napoleon's son — that 
was Josephine. 



Chaptee LI 

THE WAR IN SPAIN 

A.D. ISCZ-ISIS 

I THINK you will suspect that Napoleon began to lose 
his head some time before his divorce from Josephine. 
His mind became less clear than it had been ; he grew sub- 
ject to gusts of passion, m which he made blunder after 
blunder^ 

England and France were at war without fighting. Eng- 
land declared that no nation should trade with France, 
under penalty of having its goods seized by English cruis- 
ers. France declared that no nation should trade with 
England, under the like penalty. As England had a large 
foreign trade, and France had none, this arrangement was 
hard on England's customers, and some of them, Portugal 
in particular, refused to stop their trade with England to 
please Napoleon. On this Napoleon put a little notice in 
his paper : 

"The house of Braganza [which was the reigning house 
of Portugal] has ceased to reign." 

And he sent an army under Junot into Portugal to 
drive out the king and occupy the country. 

In the neighboring kingdom of Spain, which had been 
an ally to France, confusion prevailed. King Charles the 
Fourth, who was an imbecile, was ruled by his wife, and 
she was ruled by an adventurer, whose name was Manuel 
Godoy. The eldest son of the king, Ferdinand, was as bad 
as his father, and was always quarrelling with him. One 
day the old king would disinherit his son, and Ferdinand 
would threaten to take up arms ; the next day Charles 
would forgive him, and would swear that it was Godoy h© 



352 [1807-1813 

wanted to get rid of. Among them all Spain was horri- 
bly governed. Under pretence of taking one side or the 
other, and also of supporting Junot, Napoleon sent an army 
into Spain. 

Then on false pretexts, and by making promises which 
he did not intend to keep, he entrapped King Charles 
and his wife and their son Ferdinand into going to meet 
him at Bayonne in France. When he got them there, he 
bullied Ferdinand, who was a weak creature, into resign- 
ing his claim on the Spanish throne, in exchange for a cas- 
tle in France and a salary of a million francs a year ; then 
turning on the old king, he frightened him so terribly, by 
threats of what he was going to do, that Charles abdicated 
and made over his throne to Napoleon. So now the ground 
was clear. 

Napoleon made his brother Joseph, who was King of 
Naples, King of Spain, and to replace him as King of Na- 
ples he chose Marshal Marat, who had been a waiter in a 
cafe, but who, by way of reward for turning out the As- 
sembly on the eighteenth Brumaire, had been made a 
marshal of France and allowed to marry Napoleon's sis- 
ter Caroline. Thus, you perceive, all western Europe, from 
the borders of Prussia and Austria, was to be ruled by a 
member of the Bonaparte family, which meant Napoleon 
himself. 

But the emperor forgot that no people likes to be ruled 
by a foreigner. Above all others, the Spaniards, who are 
a high-spirited people, deeply attached to their own coun- 
try, were sure to rebel. They despised Charles and Ferdi- 
nand ; but, after all, these were Spaniards, and they thought 
the worst Spaniard had a better right to govern Spain than 
the best Frenchman. All over Spain, from the Pyrenees 
to the Mediterranean, the people rose, with such poor arms 
and such poor leaders as they could get, and swore on their 
crucifixes that they would fight the French as long as their 
ancestors had fought the Moors. And they got help. On 
the 85th of October, 1808^ an English army, under the com' 



1807-1813] 



353 



mand of a general of whom you will hear more — he was 
then Sir Arthur Wellesley — landed at Oporto in Portugal. 
The Spanish and Portuguese then began to fight in" ear- 
nest. Junot's army was forced to surrender. And the 



FJT 




PORT OF HAVRE 



French army, at Baylen, was attacked, beaten, and many 
of the prisoners murdered. Such was the rage of the Span- 
iards, that when the French General Dupont was marching 
on Cordova he came across the bodies of two hundred 
Frenchmen — some hanged or crucified on trees, some who 
had been half buried alive, some sawn in two between 
planks. Four hundred French merchants at Valencia were 
slaughtered by a mob. When Spaniards' blood is roused 
they are very cruel. 

All over Spain a new catechism was scattered ; I give 
you a short extract : 

Q. Child, what art thou ? 
23 



354 [ISOY-ISIS 

A. A Spaniard, by the grace of God. 

Q. Who is our enemy ? 

A. The Emperor of the French. 

Q. What is the Emperor of the French ? 

A. A wicked being, the source of all evils, and the cen- 
tre of all vice. 

Q. How many natures has he ? 

A. Two, the human and the diabolical. 

Q. What are the French ? 

A. Apostate Christians turned heretics. 

Q. Is it a sin to kill a Frenchman? 

A. No, my father ; heaven is gained by killing one of 
the heretical dogs. 

Maddened by the obstinacy of the Spaniards in defend- 
ing their country, Napoleon entered Spain himself, with 
three hundred thousand men and some of his best gener- 
als, and defeated the Sj^anish armies wherever he met them. 
But, as in the old times, they fled to the mountains when 
they were beaten, and after a breathing - spell began to 
fight again as fiercely as ever. There was one walled town 
named Saragossa. The French besieged it under Lannes 
and Junot, and at last broke into it. But every house was 
defended, as if it had been a fortress. It was necessary to 
blow up each building separately, and the men with their 
wives kept up the fight after they saw the mine was going 
to be sprung. At last, at the end of a battle which lasted 
thirty-one days, after the French had got into the city, it 
surrendered, fifty-four thousand people out of a population 
of a hundred thousand having been killed. The corpses 
which the garrison had not had time to bury poisoned the 
air. 

The war lasted four years more, but Napoleon was not 
with his troops, and his generals lost as many battles as 
they won. It is difficult to conquer a country where every 
man, woman, and child is resisting the conquest. The 
French were led by one French marshal after another — 
Lannes, Junot, Ney, Murat, Soult, Massena, Suchet ; the 



1807-1813] 355 

Spaniards and their allies, the English, by Sir Arthur 
Wellesley — who afterward became the Duke of Welling- 
ton — Sir John Moore, and others. In the war splendid 
deeds of bravery were done on both sides and glorious vic- 
tories won. But you will not remember any of them as 
well as the lines on the death of Sir John Moore, who was 
killed as his army was retreating to Corunna. I dare say 
you learned them at school : 

"Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, 

As his corpse to the rampart we hurried ; 
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 

O'er the grave where our hero was buried. 
We buried him darkly at dead of night, 

The sods with our bayonets turning , 
By the straggling moonbeams' misty light, 

And the lantern dimly burning. 
No useless cofiin enclosed his breast, 

Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him ; 
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, 

With his martial cloak around him." 

The end of the war in Spain was that the French were 
driven out by the combined Spaniards and English, and 
were followed in pursuit as far as Toulouse in France, 
where they were badly beaten. They lost thousands of 
brave soldiers, who were sacrificed to Napoleon's greed 
for empire; and the war filled the hearts of Spaniards with 
a hatred for the French name which has not yet been 
quenched. 




ST. CLOUD 



Chapter LTI 

DOWNFALL OF NAPOLEON 

A.D. 1812-1814 

]N"apoleon's attempt to make his brother Joseph Kin or 
of Spain convinced the kino;s of Europe that there could 
be no peace for them so long as the emperor reigned. 
They were still so much afraid of him that none of them 
declared war, but he could see that they meant it all the 
same. He prepared for it accordingly, and as the first step 
be raised the number of his army to a million men, twice 
as many soldiers as the Union armies ever counted at any 
one time in our civil war. To raise this enormous force 
he had to press young men into the ranks long before their 
beards had grown ; in many villages not one young man 
or half-grown boy was left, and the woods were full of 
boys trying to escape the draft. He also drew soldiers 
from the countries he had overrun, Italy, Bavaria, West- 
phalia, and even parts of Austria and Prussia. 

In the first spring days of 1812 the emperor reviewed 
four hundred thousand men in the Field of Mars at Paris ; 
tbev made so grand a show that it looked as though under 



1812-1814] 357 

such a leader they could conquer all Europe. He had re- 
solved to attack Russia first ; not that he had any particu- 
lar ground of quarrel with her, but that she was the head 
of the combination against him and the only nation in 
Europe, except England, which he had not humbled. Pre- 
texts for a war were easily found, and in March, 1812, 
he ordered his army to move. It numbered six hundred 
and fifty thousand men, sixty thousand horses, and twelve 
hundred cannon. 

The Russians lay waiting for them on the Dwina and 
the Dnieper rivers, with something over three hundred 
thousand men. They were commanded by a wise old gen- 
eral named Barclay de Tolly, who knew how hard it was 
to beat Napoleon in battle. When the French came up he 
retreated, burning towns and villages, grain, fruit-trees, 
and food of all kinds. Napoleon pushed on ; Barclay kept 
falling back before him. Every day the French gained 
a few miles, and every day the Russians retreated as many. 
Thus Barclay kept drawing the French farther and farther 
from their home, and into a country where a field-mouse 
would have starved. The Emperor of Russia could not un- 
derstand this wise policy; he removed Barclay and put in 
his place General KutusoflT, who gave battle to the French 
at a place called Borodino. 

This was one of the most terrible battles of these terri- 
ble times. The Russians lost sixty thousand men killed 
and wounded, the French thirty thousand. The French 
won the day, but they could not prevent the survivors of 
the Russian army from retreating into Moscow. There 
the French followed them. 

You will be surprised to hear that just before entering 
Moscow, Napoleon wrote to the Russian emperor, 

*' Whatever may be the fortunes of war, nothing can 
weaken my regard for my friend of Tilsit." 

You see, Naj^oleon could not be honest. He was always 
playing a part and making believe. 

Moscow was a city as large as Baltimore or San Fran- 



358 [1812-1814 

cisco ; it was the ancient capital of Russia, and was full of 
wealth and splendor. When the French saw from a hill- 
top, under the rays of the setting sun, the ancient city with 
its gilded domes and Asiatic spires, its roofs glittering with 
many-colored tiles, and its gorgeous Kremlin, the citadel 
of the czars, they burst into shouts of joy. The}^ felt that 
here were rest and plenty, and glory and triumph, such as 
they had found in the Italian cities. But when they en- 
tered Moscow they found it as empty as a desert and as 
silent as a grave. There was no one in the streets. The 
houses were all shut up. The only sound that caught their 
ear was the occasional howl of a deserted dog. By orders 
of the Russian emperor every one had quitted the city, 
leaving only the ghost of Moscow behind. The French 
officers galloped from quarter to quarter, but could find no 
enemy and no people. They were disappointed, but they 
made the best of it : the weary troopers camped in gor- 
geous palaces and stretched themselves under silken cano- 
pies ; bearded grenadiers set their muddy boots on laced 
linen sheets and tried to forget their bleeding wounds. 

That night, fire broke out in twenty different places at 
once. The prisoners had been released from the jails on 
condition that they would burn Moscow from end to end. 
They had cut off the supply of water and disabled the 
fire-engines. A fierce equinoctial gale swept over the city, 
and the houses, which were built of wood, burned like tin- 
der. In fifty different places barrels of powder, with their 
heads staved in, had been set in cellars. Explosion fol- 
lowed explosion ; the night air was lit up with burning 
sticks and sparks; the Russian jail -birds crowed with 
fiendish glee. In wild confusion the French soldiers rushed 
from their beds, groped their way through smoke and 
flame, and ran into the suburbs and thence into the coun- 
try. Those who had served in Spain said to each other 
that the Russian blood was up, as the Spanish blood had 
been up. 

Napoleon made the best of his way to a castle three 



1812-1814] 359 

miles from Moscow, and as he watched the sea of flames, 
which rose and fell, he said, 

" This forebodes no common calamity." 

In which prediction he was more nearly right than he 
had been of late in his prophecies. 

The fire lasted five days. At the end of that time there 
was no shelter for the troops, nor food for them to live on. 
So thoroughly had the work been done that fifteen thou- 
sand Russians who had been left in the hospitals were all 
burned to death. 

It was then the 19th of September, and the terrible Rus- 
sian winter was near at hand. If Napoleon had been wise, 
he would have ordered an immediate retreat. But he was 
too proud to avow himself beaten, and he wasted six pre- 
cious weeks in skirmishing round Moscow, while his men 
were dying of hunger and privations and wounds from an 
unseen foe. At last, on November 1st, he gave orders to 
march homeward. But now the Russians got their inn- 
ings. They set their teeth in their stolid way, and vowed 
to each other that not one of these prowling Frenchmen 
who had come to conquer their Russia should be allowed to 
return home. They dogged their footsteps, hung on their 
rear, worried their flanks, popped up in front of them. 
Every morning, when the sun rose over the glittering 
stretches of the snow-fields, the French saw between them 
and the horizon clouds of Cossacks, riding with their sharp 
lances in air, waiting for a chance to dash in and stab 
tired troopers who stopped to rest ; every little hill and 
clump of bushes hid a party of sharp-shooters who took 
aim at the weary fugitives as they passed. From morning 
till night the crack of the Russian musket never ceased, 
and the French could be followed by their bloody trail. 

As the season advanced terribly cold weather set in, 
with heavy snow-storms and icy winds. The French had 
lost their tents and their overcoats. They lived on the 
flesh of the horses which died and a little flour soaked in 
water. The wounded had to be left behind for want of 



360 [1812-1814 

means to move them. Frost and sickness reduced the em- 
peror's guard from thirty-seven thousand to ten thousand, 
though it had not been in battle. The famous first corps, 
which had counted seventy- five thousand bayonets and 
sabres at the beginning of the campaign, could only mus- 
ter eight thousand at the end. Suffering made the troops 
torpid ; they just lay down and died where they were. On 
the bank of the Berezina, where large bonfires had been 
lit and supplies of food gathered, they crouched round 
the fires, and did not stir when the Russian bullets came 
crashing among them. When they were warmed and fed, 
they made a rush for the bridges, and pushed one another 
into the freezing river in their haste to escape the Cossack 
lances. 

On that retreat from Moscow, Napoleon had lost his wits 
as well as his men. While his troops were starving, he 
burned np provisions for fear the Russians should use 
them, and he left his generals to get out of the scrape into 
which he had led them. On December the 5th, without 
sa^dng a word to any one, he deserted his army and 
ran away to Paris. He left Murat in command, and this 
general managed to draw off the small remnant of the 
army, who fought their way through Cossacks and strug- 
gled through snow-drifts to Wilna, where the Russian 
pursuit ceased. 

There were at this time not over twenty-five thousand 
troops left. Of the groat army which Napoleon had led 
forth to conquer Russia, three hundred thousand were 
dead, and one hundred thousand were prisoners. The rest 
had been left in garrison on the line of march. 

Napoleon reached Paris on December the 18th. You 
might suppose that after such an awful defeat he would 
try to make peace with his enemies. Nothing of the kind. 
By gathering the soldiers he had left in France, scooping 
up all the boys he could find, and adding them to the rem- 
nant of his Russian army and his garrisons in Germany, 
Italy, and Spain, he figured that he could still put five hun- 



1812-1814] 



361 



dred thousand men in the field, and he set about doing" it. 
Human life was never anything to him. 

But his luck was gone. By tremendous efforts he suc- 
ceeded in gathering two hundred and fifty thousand men 
— enough perhaps to hold his own against Russia and 
Prussia, which had now joined Russia. He counted that 
Austria would be neutral, because he had married the Aus- 
trian emperor's daughter, and here is where his calculations 
failed. There was a meeting between him and the prime- 




EETREAT OF THE FRENCH 



minister of Austria, Metternich, at Dresden, on June 28th, 
1813. Metternich, who was more far-sighted and more 
cool-headed than Napoleon, told him frankly that Europe 
wanted peace, that the emperor must give up some of his 
conquests and stop making war oa his neighbors. Napo- 



362 [1812-1814 

leon flew into one of his rages, dashed a priceless porcelain 
vase to pieces, threw his hat on the ground and stamped 
on it, and said he would never, never surrender a foot of 
land he had won; whereupon Metternich, with a sneering 
smile, observed, 

"Sire, you are done for." 

And as soon as the Austrian got back to Vienna, Austria 
joined Russia and Prussia against France and agreed to 
put a quarter of a million men in the field. Meanwhile, 
Bernadotte, King of Sweden, one of Napoleon's old gen- 
erals, joined the coalition, Wellington, with his English 
troops, came marching up from Spain, and another English 
army landed at Hamburg. With his old dash and bold- 
ness, Napoleon invaded Germany and fought several bat- 
tles which decided nothing ; but the enemy were two to 
one, and at last, at Leipsic, on October ISth, 1813, he fought 
a battle in opposition to the advice of his wisest generals. 
Here his Saxon troops deserted him as soon as fire was 
opened. Napoleon claimed that he was not beaten, but in 
fact the result of the fight was that he had to retreat to 
France. 

Even then he would not agree to the terms of peace 
which Metternich pressed on him. He insisted on levying 
more boy - soldiers. There was no reasoning with him, 
and on December 21st Schwartzenberg, at the head of 
his Austrians, entered France, and Blticher, at the head of 
his Prussians, followed ten days afterward. Both armies 
headed for Paris. Naj^oleon fell upon them again and 
again on the march and sometimes won small victories ; 
but the great swell of the foreign armies was too mighty 
to be resisted, and on the last day of March, 1814, the 
allies, under the command of the Emperor Alexander of 
Russia, entered the French capital. On the day following 
the French Senate — ah ! how it had crawled at his feet in 
past days ! — decreed that Napoleon had ceased to reign. 

He had been some days in Paris, listening to the mutter- 
ing of the eoming storm. He knew that tbe members of 



1812-1814] 363 

the Legislative Assembly were tired of liim ; he called them 
together and dismissed them, with these words : 

" Your object is to humble me. My life may be sacri- 
ficed, but my honor, never. I was not born in the rank of 
kings. I do not depend on the throne. What is a throne? 
A few deal boards covered with velvet. Must I sacrifice 
my pride to obtain peace ? I am proud, because I am brave. 
I am proud, because I have done great things for France. 
France needs me more than I need her. In three months 
we shall have peace, or I will be dead. Now go to your 
homes." 

He was at Fontainebleau when the Senate deposed him, 
and even then he proposed to go on with the fight in the 
streets of Paris. But his ofiicers flatly told him they would 
be gnilty of no such folly. Then he said he would abdi- 
cate in favor of his son. This was proposed to the allied 
generals, and Alexander of Russia, who was tender-hearted 
and liked Napoleon, was for accepting it. But the other 
generals would not listen to it for a moment, and after 
spending a whole night in vain pleadings, at six in the 
morning, on April 2d, he signed a paper, renouncing the 
French throne for himself and his heirs. 

It read as follows : 

" The allied powers having proclaimed the Emperor Na- 
poleon to be the only obstacle to the restoration of peace 
in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, de- 
clares that he renounces for himself and his heirs the 
thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no sacrifice, 
even that of life, which he is not ready to make for the 
interests of France. 

" Given at the palace of Fontainebleau, April 2d, 1814." 

It was arrana:ed that he should have the island of Elba 
in the Mediterranean for a dominion. He was to start for 
his new empire on April 20th. His wife and his son were 
not to go with him. Her father, the Emperor of Austria, 
thought she would be safer at Vienna, and in her dull, 
passive way she thought so too. Napoleon did not care 



364 [1§12-1814 

to have her, and she had long before let every one see that 
she did not care for him. There was one woman whose 
heart was aching with painful longing to be with him in his 
hour of sorrow. That was Josephine. She offered to go 
to take care of him, and to be his handmaid and his nurse, 
if Marie Louise kept out of the way. But all parties said 
it was out of the question. 

In one of the magnificent galleries of paintings in Paris 
you will see a fine picture of Napoleon taking leave of his 
marshals and generals. 

Perhaps you may think it a trifle theatrical. For two 
or three years the emperor had been grossly unjust to his 
generals, blaming them for the results of his own blunders. 
Many of them were tired of him and of his endless wars, 
in which they had seen their brothers in arms give up their 
lives for his ambition. Some of them had for some time 
been secretly treating with the enemy. I don't think that 
those who knew him best were sorriest to get rid of hira. 

When he parted from them he threw his eyes to heaven 
and cried, 

"Soldiers, I have but one mission left in life — to recount 
to posterity the glorious deeds we have done together." 

I do not find that that history was begun till long after- 
ward, when Napoleon had nothing else to do ; and I sus- 
pect that, even when he uttered these words, he was think- 
ing how near Elba was to France. 

On his way south the people of Avignon and Orgon 
mobbed his escort, and shouted that the tyrant should be 
hanged or thrown into the Rhone. At Orgon, the first ob- 
ject which struck his eye was an efiigy of himself, hanging 
by a rope round its neck and swinging in the air. When 
the gate of the court-yard where his carriage stopped was 
closed, a butcher choj^ped it in pieces with an axe, and 
the yard quickly filled with a seething, shouting crowd of 
men and women. 

" Where are my two sous, whom I lost in Russia ?" cried 
one woman. 



1812-1814] 



365 



" Where," cried anotlier, " is my husband, who fell at 
Wagram ?" 

" Give me my father, who was killed in Italy," screamed 
a third. 

The escort had to bestir themselves to get their prisoner 
off safely. Napoleon put on a disguise and drove away 
by a back gate. Thus he got through, embarked on an 
English frigate, and landed at Porto Ferrayo in Elba on 
May 4th, 1814. 




AVIGNON 




LOUIS XVIII 



Chapter LIII 

WATERLOO 
A.D. 1814-1815 

When Napoleon was overthrown the government of 
France fell into the hands of the Emperor of Russia, the 
Emperor of Austria, and an exceedingly adroit French- 
man whose name was Talleyrand. These three decided 
that Louis, the brother of Louis the Sixteenth, was the 
proper person to succeed the emperor ; he was to be 
known as Louis the Eighteenth, because the poor little 
dauphin, who had died in the Temple and had never 
reigned at all, must be counted among the kings of 
France, as Louis the Seventeenth. It was agreed that the 
conquests of Napoleon should be given up, and that, under 
her new king, France, with her old boundaries, should 
make such laws for herself as she saw fit, without foreign 
interference. 

Louis the Eighteenth was a fat man of sixty, who had 
spent the last twenty-five years in England and had be- 
come very English indeed. He had never had any ex- 
perience in public affairs or in the wars of the day. He 




TALLEYRAND 



was a quiet old gentleman, who loved his ease and his 
books ; he was- fond of the Latin poets ; he was also fond 
of English roast beef and plum pudding ; in the middle of 
a good dinner he would eat half a dozen lamb chops just 
by way of whetting his appetite. You will not be sur- 
prised to hear that he was gouty and walked with diffi- 
culty. He wore a blue coat with epaulets, an English hat, 
and red velvet gaiters which hid his swollen legs. He 
had neither wife nor children, but the daughter of Louis 
the Sixteenth, who was called the Duchess of Angouleme, 
lived with him and took care of him. Another lady, who 
was beautiful and gifted, and whose name was Madame 



368 [1814-1815 

Du Cayla, also took care of him and bandaged his gouty- 
legs. He was so sluggish that, when he was told he was 
wanted in Paris to reign over France, he was loath to 
leave his quiet English home. But he came, landed at 
Calais on April 24th, 1814, and travelling by easy stages, 
for fear of making his gout worse, entered Paris on the 
3d of May, in a coach drawn by eight horses, with the 
Duchess of Angouleme by his side. 

He soon showed that he had learned nothing in his long 
exile. He made a speech in which he said that he owed 
his throne to the English, which could not have been 
pleasant to the French. He ordered the old French flag, 
which was white with lilies on it, to be restored, and for- 
bade the flying of the tricolor, under which the French 
soldiers had won so much glory. He said that he wanted 
to put things back just where they had been before the 
Revolution. Now, the French had learned a great deal 
during the twenty-five years that he had spent abroad ; 
and though some of the things they had learned were not 
good, others were, and the people did not take kindly to 
the idea of having all the lessons of those years, bitter as 
some of them had been, wiped out altogether. They be- 
gan by treating their new king with indifference, then they 
got to despising him, and finally they hated him. 

There were in France thousands of old soldiers who had 
grown to love the excitement and the glory and the spoil 
of war. Many of them forgave Napoleon his selfishness 
and the reckless way in which he had led his troops 
to death, for the sake of the fame and the rewards he 
showered on them when they won battles. Under him 
every private expected to become a general and to live in 
a palace. They now grumbled at the idea of leading hum- 
drum lives of peace. After Napoleon had gone, these old 
growlers compared him to the dull, gouty, fat man who 
had taken his place — not much to the advantage of 
Louis. 

MeftftwWle? tbeir hevQ was ohafing in his little isla»4-^ 



1814-1815] 369 

which was not much larger than the District of Columbia 
and was chiefly crag and bog and wild forest. He could 
ride round it in a day. In clear, bright weather he used 
to sit on the top of a mountain and gaze wistfully at the 
coast of Italy, where he had won his first victories. After 
a time his longing to get out of his narrow prison, in which 
he could hardly breathe, and back into the great world 
once more became too strong to be resisted. He had re- 
nounced the crown of France for himself and his heirs. 
But I dare say you remember he had broken his word 
before. It was no new thing. 

On February 26th, 1815, after less than ten months' cap- 
tivity, he stole out of Elba, with eleven hundred men 
and a little fleet of small vessels, and steered for France. 
Three days afterward he landed near Cannes, in Provence. 
Without losing an hour he climbed the foot-hills of the 
Alps and took the road for Grenoble. He had provided 
himself with proclamations, in which he said, 

*' Frenchmen ! in ray exile I heard your prayers. I 
have crossed the sea to assert my rights, which are yours. 
Come and take your place under the standard of your 
chief ! Victory will advance with full gallop, and the 
eagle with the national colors will fly from steeple to 
steeple, even to the towers of Notre Dame." 

The appeal had the old ring. The people of Dauphine, 
through which he passed, forgot all about their sufferings 
and his mad rage for war, and met him with shouts of 
*' Long live the emperor !" Some joined his little band ; 
others brought him horses and provisions. At Grenoble, 
a royal regiment tried to stop him ; he stepped forth in 
his old gray overcoat and, w^th his cocked hat on, marched 
straight up to the front rank and cried, 

*' Soldiers, do you know me ?" 

" Yes, yes," answered hundreds of voices. 

Then he threw open his overcoat, and, baring his breast, 
he shouted, 

"Which among you will fire on your emperor?" 
24 



370 [1814-1815 

A roar of "Long live the emperor !" rose to heaven, and 
big men cried for joy at seeing him again. 

In Paris all was commotion. The fat old king, wheez- 
ing and whining, began to pack his trunk, and his courtiers 
bought tickets for Belgium. A few of the generals were 
for fighting it out. One of these was Ney, who had been 
an especial favorite of the emperor's and was the bravest 
of the brave ; he told Louis that if he would give him an 
army corps he would march against Napoleon and " bring 
him back in an iron cage." He got his army corps and 
did march, but he no sooner met the emperor than he pro- 
claimed him the only rightful ruler of France and joined 
him in the march to Paris. 

Napoleon reached the Tuileries on March 20th and was 
nearly stifled by the crowds which filled the rooms and the 
passages to get a sight of him, and wring bis hands, and 
fall on his neck, in the excitable way the French have. He 
had not fired a shot on his three weeks' journey. Every 
one seemed as glad to see him as he was to be back. From 
the wild joy of the people he might have imagined that his 
troubles were over. But he was too wise for that. 

He knew that in two months all Europe would be in 
arms against him again, with forces so much larger than 
his that nothing short of a miracle would enable him to 
hold^ his own against them. He tried to conciliate every 
one. His old harshness and his imperious manner were 
gone. He submitted to rebuke quite meekly and let his 
officers scold him, even when he was right and they were 
wrong. He was ready, he said, to give up his foreign con- 
quests, and to let France have a real instead of a sham As- 
sembly to make laws for her. Ah ! if his word could only 
have been trusted ! 

In public he was cheerful and even gay, but this was 
only acting ; in private he was bowed down by sadness. 
He spent days and nights in thinking over the past and 
brooding over the future. In his inmost soul he felt that 
his sun was set. His chief companion in those days was 



1814-1815] 3Y1 

Hortense, Josephine's daughter — Josephine herself hnd 
died when he vvas at Elba. With Hortense he spent long 
hours at Malmaison, wondering what strange lot fortune 
had yet in store for him. 

He knew that his only chance was to strike the first blow 
at the Russians and Austrians and Prussians and Ensflish 
and Belgians who were gathering beyond the Rhine, and 
with what soldiers he could gather he left Paris in June. 
Before he left he appointed a council to rule France while 
he was with the army. His last words to them were mourn- 
ful. He said, 

" If I am victorious we shall build up a new regime. If 
I am conquered God alone knows what will become of you 
and of me. It is our fate, and nothing can avert it. All 
will be decided in twenty or thirty days. For the present 
let us do what we can and see what the future will brinof. 
But let the friends of liberty look well to it ; if the game 
is lost they will have to deal with the Bourbons, who will 
be worse than I have been." 

. He set out for Belgium with a hundred and eighty-two 
thousand soldiers. Waiting for him near the city of Brus- 
sels were a hundred and twenty-four thousand Prussians, 
under Bliicher, and ninety-five thousand English and Dutch, 
under Wellington. Three hundred thousand Austrians 
and a hundred and seventy-five thousand Russians were on 
the march, and would join the English and Prussians in 
July. On June loth, Napoleon crossed the Sambre with a 
hundred and twenty-four thousand men and three hundred 
and fifty cannon. 

On the 16th he beat the Prussians at Ligny ; on the 17th 
it rained all day, and artillery could not be used ; on the 
18th the battle of Waterloo was fought. 

This was one of the most bloody battles of modern times, 
and it changed the face of Europe. The battle began at 
eleven in the morning, as soon as the fog had lifted from 
the wet fields ; it did not end till near nine in the evening, 
when the faces of the dead and the wounded could no 



372 [1814-1815 

longer be seen for the darkness. All that day the cannon 
thundered with an endless roar, and the French cuirassiers, 
with their shining steel breastplates and on their big horses, 
charged and charged and charged again upon the squares 
which the English infantry formed on a hill. On a hill on 
one side of the battle-field Napoleon sat on his horse, with 
his spyglass in his hand ; on the other side of the battle- 
field, also on a hill, stood Wellington, in his red uniform, 
silent, stern, and cold. Between the two the face of the 
plain was often hidden from view by clouds of smoke 
through which red flames flashed. 

When the French cuirassiers again and again charged 
up the hill to the spot where Wellington stood, he threw 
himself into an infantry square, and said quietly, 

" Hard pounding this, gentlemen." 

When the Scotch Grays, an English cavalry regiment, 
charged the French lancers and actually rode through 
them, Napoleon, who was watching with his spyglass, said 
to the Belgian who held his horse, 

"Look at those gray horses — how they work ! They 
are all mixed up with my lancers." 

It was the French, led by Ney, who forced the fighting. 
The English stood stubbornly in their squares, or lay down 
on their faces on the ground to avoid the hail of round 
shot and grape and bullets. 

Both generals kept gazing from time to time into the 
distance. Napoleon expected Grouchy to arrive with 
thirty-four thousand fresh men ; but he never came, nor 
even sent to say he was coming. Wellington expected 
Bliicher with his Prussians ; he did come, early in the 
evening, and when he came the battle was won. He 
launched his troopers against the tired French, and, Wel- 
lington hurling his English guards against them at the 
same time, the emperor's army broke and fled. 

One battalion of the Imperial Guard formed a square, and 
when the English summoned it to surrender, its commander, 
old Cambronue, replied. 



1814-1815] 



3Y3 



" The guard may die, but it will not surrender." 
The English pulled trigger, and not one man escaped. 
When darkness fell the French army had ceased to ex- 
ist. Through all the dark hours of that summer night 
fierce old Bliicher, with his heavy cavalry and his flying 
artillery, galloped after the flying French, taking prisoners 
and slaughtering. In all his life Bliicher never spared a 
beaten enemy. The pursuit only stopped when the swords 



..^^ 




TOMB OP NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA 

of the troopers were dripping with blood, and they were 
falling from their horses from weariness. At that hour 
Napoleon, curled up at the bottom of a carriage, was being 
driven swiftly to Paris, gazing with wide - open e3^es into 
the darkness. 

When he reached the city he still planned further re- 
sistance. But the Assembly plucked up courage enough to 
demand his abdication, and when he proposed to abdicate 



374 [1814-1815 

in favor of his son they would not even answer him. So 
he took horse and started with a few old friends for the 
sea-coast, whence he said he would sail to the United States. 
While he was riding the English and Prussians entered 
Paris, and sent word to Louis the Eighteenth that he might 
come back. 

Napoleon left Paris on June the 29th. For three days he 
never spoke a word. On July the 3d he arrived at Roche- 
fort, which was blockaded by an English battle-ship called 
the Belleroplion. On board this vessel the emperor took 
refuge, saying that he cast himself on the hospitality of 
the English and claimed the protection of their laws. The 
Belleroplion weighed anchor and sailed to England. 

Napoleon did not receive from the English the hospital- 
ity he expected. The government decided to send him to 
the little sultry, barren rock of St. Helena, in the tropics, 
off the coast of Africa, and to hold him there as a prisoner. 
St. Helena is surrounded by so stormy a sea that it is not 
easy to land on it, or to leave it, except in very fair weather. 

If a ship-of-war mounted guard near the island Napoleon 
could not escape from the place, as he had escaped from 
Elba. That was what the powers wanted to make sure of. 
The fallen emperor was allowed to take with him three of 
his old generals, a personal friend, a doctor, and twelve 
servants. He had a plantation in the centre of the island 
for his residence, horses to ride, and a good table. But to 
keep sure watch of him an English officer was required to 
see him twice every day, and when he rode off his planta- 
tion he was followed by this officer on horseback. 

Over him was set the Governor of St. Helena, Sir Hud- 
son Lowe. I suppose that no one in such a station could 
have pleased his prisoner, and that Napoleon, who grew 
irritable in his captivity, could not have been friendly 
with his jailer, even though the latter had been an angel. 
But Sir Hudson Lowe was a small-minded, mean man, who 
seemed to take pleasure in annoying Napoleon and making 
him feel that he was fallen indeed. The British govern- 



1814-1815] 



375 



ment, to which he had given so much trouble, did not go 
out of its way to make life pleasant for one who had cost 
England so many lives and so much money. It was con- 
stantly laying down rules which wounded the emperor's 
proud spirit and threw him into rages. 

One source of quarrel was the title by which he was to 
be addressed. He insisted on being called the Emperor 
Napoleon. To this Sir Hudson Lowe replied that he was 
not emperor any more, and that his right title was General 




LUXEMBOURG 



Bonaparte. ITapoleon would not receive letters addressed 
to General Bonaparte ; Sir Hudson would not deliver any 
to the Emperor Napoleon. Finally it was settled that the 
latter should be called plain Napoleon Bonaparte, without 
the title of emperor or general or even mister. 

He was not allowed to write sealed letters to any one. 
When he wrote to his friends Sir Hudson opened the let- 
ters and read them. He could not receive money from his 
own family. 

He was in bad health when he arrived at St. Helena. 



376 [1814-1815 

His constitution had been broken down by work and anxi- 
ety. Under the fierce rays of the blazing sun of that 
treeless, scorched island he grew worse, and cancer set in. 
The dreadful disease grew gradually worse, and the pain 
it caused became frightful. In April, 1821, when he was 
fifty-two years old, he knew that he was dying. He called 
his friends round him and told them. 

"You," he said, " will return to Europe. I am going to 
meet Kleber, Desaix, Lannes, and my other dead comrades. 
They will come to meet me. We shall speak together of 
what w^e have done. We shall talk of our profession." 

The agony grew worse, and he became delirious. In his 
delirium he cried, " My son ! The arm}^ ! Desaix ! The 
head of the army !" 

As the sun was setting that night in waves of light over 
the rolling ocean, and just as an English cannon fired the 
evening gun, an attendant stepped to his bedside and 
found that he was dead. His body was straight, and there 
was a tranquil smile on his face. It was the oth of May, 
the anniversary of his first day at Elba, seven years before. 

When Louis the Eighteenth got back on his throne, 
under the protection of English and Prussian bayonets, he 
determined to make an example of some ofiicers who had 
been false to him when Napoleon returned from Elba. He 
chose Marshal Ney to begin with. 

The marshal, as you remember, had been one of Na- 
poleon's favorite generals. When Louis the Eighteenth 
came to the throne, after the retreat from Moscow, Ney 
offered him his services and was given a high command. 
When Napoleon returned from Elba it was Ney who volun- 
teered to meet his old commander, and he went out of his 
way to say that he would bring him back to Paris in an 
iron cage. When he did meet him he deserted his king, 
joined Napoleon, marched with him to Paris, and fought 
gallantly at the battle of Waterloo. I think j^ou will have 
to conclude that if any man had been guilty of treason, 
Ney was the man. 




MARSHAL NEY 



He was arrested, put on his trial before the Chamber of 
Peers, found guilty, and sentenced to be shot. The king 
refused to pardon him, though some of his best friends 
begged Key's life on their knees. 

He was taken into the Luxembourg Gardens and set 
with his back against the wall. You can see the spot if 
you go to Paris ; a statue of N"ey has lately been erected 
there. A file of veteran troops stood in front of him. He 
took off his hat and waved it, crying, "Long live France !" 
then, raising his left hand to his breast, he called, 

" Soldiers, aim at my heart." 

The officer gave the command; and Ney fell on his face, 
dead, with ten bullets in his breast. 



Chapter LIV 

THE BOURBONS 
A.D. 1815-1830 

Louis the Eighteenth had studied politics in England, 
and his idea of governing a country was to have a parlia- 
ment elected by the people and to let it make the laws. 
He arranged accordingly for the election of a Chamber to. 
act with a House of Peers, and appointed a ministry that 
was expected to be agreeable to both. But the persons 
who composed the Chamber w^ere a small, select class, and 
they were not born with the faculty of self-government. 
People must be educated up to that business, and very 
often the education takes time. The Chamber w^hich met 
became as hot a scene of strife as the old Assembly and 
the Convention had been ; nobody was willing to yield any- 
thing to anybody else, and instead of healing the wounds 
of France the Chamber seemed to make them worse. 

The people were divided into two parties. One consist- 
ed of those who wanted to make the best of the situation, 
to forget the past, and try to get the government working 
again in an orderly way ; the other was led by the Emi- 
grants and the old nobles, w^ho wanted to take vengeance 
on the men of the Revolution and the followers of Napo- 
leon and to put things back on their old footing. Between 
these two parties Louis wavered, now this way, now that. 
He could not prevent the exile and execution of a number 
of Napoleon's friends, though he tried to do so. But he ad- 
hered to the old notion that kings were kings by the grace 
of God, and that the will of the people had nothing to do 
with the case. He never quite understood that there had 
been a revolution in France, and that men's opinions had 
changed in the past twenty -five years. 



1815-1830J 379 

He was old, too, and lazy, and his gout troubled him a 
great deal; so, when the nobles and Madame du Cayla bul- 
lied him, telling him that the party of order would guillotine 
him as they had guillotined his brother, he shivered and let 
them lead him. They brought the Jesuits back; they pro- 
posed to restore the old privileges of the nobility and the 
clergy; they would not allow any one to vote unless he 
had property worth at least sixty dollars ; they put a gag in 
the mouth of newspapers; they filled the offices with men 
of title. Finally, the wretched King of Spain — the same 
man who had sold his birthright to Napoleon for a castle in 
France and a million francs a year — having fallen out with 
his people, they gave Louis no rest till he sent an army 
into Spain, under his nephew, to put the Spaniards down 
and hold the king up. 

This angered the French, who said, very truthfully, that 
the Spaniards had as good a right to govern themselves as 
the French had, and plots began to be concocted for the 
murder of Louis. I am afraid that one of them would 
have accomplished its purpose, but that, in September, 
1824, after a reign of nine years, he one day died in his 
bed. 

He was succeeded by his brother Charles, who had borne 
the title of Count of Artois, and after his coronation was 
known as King Charles the Tenth. » 

He was sixty-seven years old. In his youth he had been 
wild — he had led the same vile life as Louis the Fifteenth 
and the Regent Orleans. In his old age he fell into the 
hands of the priests and became very pious. Still he be- 
gan well — he took the gag out of the mouth of the news- 
papers, asked some of Napoleon's generals to court, and 
invited liberal men to help him with their counsels. But 
this did not last long. People noticed that Charles went 
to mass every morning, which perhaps was not such a bad 
thing; but he also walked through the streets in religious 
processions, was anointed by an archbishop, and pretended 
to cure people who had scrofula by touching them. He 



380 [1815-1830 

had newspapers indicted for speaking ill of the Jesuits, 
and he was surprised when they were acquitted by the 
juries. 

He began to be very obstinate indeed. He revived the 
nunneries, which the Republic had abolished, and he set 
at defiance a decree of court declaring that Jesuitism was 
illegal in France. When he appeared at a review^, and the 
people shouted, " Down with the ministers ! Down with 
the Jesuits !" he replied haughtily, "I came to France to 
receive homage, not a lecture." 

Which so exasperated the mob that they followed the 
carriage containing the ladies of the king's family, shout- 
ing, '' Down with the she-Jesuits !" 

Determined to crush those who objected to the power of 
the priests, Charles dissolved the Chamber. A riot follow- 
ing, he sent troops against the rioters and killed numbers 
of them. Beranger, the song-writer, who was the idol 
of Paris, wrote a song quizzing Charles ; he was sent to 
prison for nine months and was fined ten thousand francs, 
which was ten times more than he had. On October 9th, 
1829, the king appointed a new ministry, consisting of men 
who were hateful to the French. Prince Polignac, of the 
Hol}^ Roman empire, was at their head. 

Then loomed up in the midst of the confusion the man 
of all others whom the French loved — old, white-haired La- 
fayette, the hero of the beginning of the Revolution. He 
was afraid of nothing, and he said that France ought not 
to submit to a bigoted tyrant, and that the new prime- 
minister, Polignac, must go. The French hung round him 
when he appeared in the streets and cheered him as loudly 
as they cursed Polignac. Charles was not shaken. When 
the Chamber met he said, 

" Should obstacles arise in my path, I will find strength 
to surmount them." 

The Chamber sent a petition requesting the king to dis- 
miss Polignac. He replied, 

*' I have announced to you my intentions. My resolves 



1815-1830] 



381 



are not to be shaken. My ministers will explain my pur- 
poses to you." 

On July 25th, by royal ordinance, Charles suspended the 
liberty of the press, dissolved the Chamber, and reduced 
the number of citizens who could vote to a mere handful. 
Then he went out hunting. Lafayette started from his 
country place for Paris, and the people of the stout old 
city got ready for another tussle wdth a despot. 




MARQUIS PE LAFAYETTE 

At five in the morning of the 28th the people turned out 
with such weapons as they could get, and filled the streets. 
They tore down pictures of the king from the signs, threw 
down the white flag, pole and all, from the City Hall, and 
hoisted the tricolor to the highest steeple of Notre Dame. 



382 [1815-1830 

They seized a powder magazine, and the women made 
cartridges. General Marmont, Governor of Paris, warned 
the king that a revolution was impending. Charles waved 
his white, jewelled hand in his grand way, and bade him 
brush away all that rabble wdth his troops. Polignac or- 
dered him to open fire at once. The fighting did indeed 
begin, under a sweltering sun, and several thousand people 
were killed. By night crowds of countrymen came troop- 
ing into Paris, armed with old muskets and scythes and 
pitchforks. 

Marmont advised the king to give way, but he only 
laughed his high-bred laugh and sat down to his usual 
game of whist, while the cannon which were being fired at 
the people shook the windows of the room in which he sat. 

On the next day several of Marmont's regiments passed 
over to the side of the revolutionists. The mob took the 
Tuileries, and hoisted the tricolor over it. They set guards 
over the Treasury and the Louvre, and when a man was 
found stealing he was promptly shot. At evening Lafayette 
came in and took command of the national guards. Late 
that night Charles wrote that he would dismiss his min- 
istry and revoke his ordinances. Then he sat down to his 
whist-table and began leading trumps. 

It was too late. On July 30th one of the leaders of the 
movement asked Lafayette, 

"Are you willing to be president of a new French re- 
public ?" 

The answer came quick and clear, 

"Certainly not." 

" Then you must help us to make the Duke of Orleans 
king." 

The duke went to the City Hall to meet him, and said 
to the people, 

" You see before you an old national guardsman of 1789, 
who has come to see his general." 

People were not quite satisfied. The Orleans family 
had a bad name. General Dubourg said to him, 



1815-1830] 383 

" If you make promises and break them, we shall know- 
how to deal with you." 

"Sir," said the duke, "I am an honest man, and do not 
need to be reminded of my promises." 

By this time the king, who was still at Rambouillet, was 
having trouble with his digestion, and was beginning to 
think that it was about time to stop leading trumps. He 
sent for Odilon Barrot, and asked him in a trembling 
voice, 

" What am I to do ?" 

Said Odilon Barrot: "Your majesty must get out of 
France as fast as you can. And, by-the-bye, I happen to 
have with me a regiment of cavalry, which will escort 
your majesty to the frontier, for fear any one should be 
rude to you." 

It was so done. Charles was escorted to Cherbourg, 
where he took ship for England. He settled at Edinburgh, 
and there spent the rest of his life, going to mass and 
leading trumps. 

Meanwhile things settled down at Paris. When some 
one wanted to set up the republic once more, old, white- 
haired Lafayette, who, as you remember, had seen a good 
deal of republics in France, answered that the Duke of 
Orleans was the best possible republic. 

Paris being of this mind, and France being of the mind 
of Paris, the Duke of Orleans became king, under the title 
of Louis Philippe the First. But there were two changes 
in the kingship. It was stated, and affirmed on the coins 
which were issued from the mint, that Louis Philippe was 
king, not of France, but of the French; and that he Avas 
not king by the grace of God, but by the will of the 
French people. 



Chapter LY 

A CITIZEN KING 
A.D. 1830-1848 

Louis Philippe was the son of that bad Philippe Equal- 
ity who had so disgusted the Parisians by his shameless- 
ness that nobody was sorry when the Jacobins sent him to 
the guillotine. Equality's son was severely brought up by 
a strong-minded woman named Madame de Genlis. She 
made him get up at six, winter and summer ; trained him 
to sleep on bare boards, and would not allow him to eat 
anything but roast meat, bread, and milk. He was never 
allowed to play, but was taught carpenter-work, mason- 
work, and the management of horses. When he grew a 
tall lad, he went to the armies, and under Dumouriez 
fought for the republic gallantly and faithfully. When 
the Jacobins, after executing his father, ordered his arrest, 
he fled from France, and for twenty-one years he wan- 
dered over the world an exile, without home or country or 
monej^ supporting himself at times by teaching school. 
He was fifty-seven years old when he became King of the 
French, and was thought by those who knew him to be an 
honest, brave, and well-meaning man. 

He took an oath to govern in conformity with a bill of 
rio-hts which the French called a charter It had been first 
put forth by Louis the Eighteenth, and afterward accepted 
by Charles the Tenth; but as neither of them had paid at- 
tention to it after he was crowned, I have not thought 
it worth while to mention it. Louis Philippe did try to 
live up to it. And on the whole, though he reigned 
through troublous times, and not long ago it was custom- 
ary to speak ill of him, I think myself that he was a fair 
king, as kings go. 



1830-1 848] 



385 



He called himself a citizen king, dressed like an old 
grocer, and walked the streets with an old umbrella, talk- 
ing to every one he knew. He took a rough common-sense 
view of his duties. When some one urged him to dismiss 
his ministers (you will find that, even in our day, the French 
no sooner set up a ministry than they try to pull it down) 
he replied, 

*' The policy of my ministers ! I don't know what you 
mean. There is but one policy, and that is my policy. 
Convince me that I am wrong and I will change it ; until 
then I will stick to it though you bray me in a mortar." 




THE BOULEVARDS FIFTY YEARS AGO 

The best men in France — old General Lafayette, the 
banker Lafitte, Guizot, and Thiers, and others of equal 
note — thought he gave France a very good government 
indeed. 

But the old fermentation still continued. Every few 
months discontented people tried to get up a revolution, 
mostly without knowing what they really wanted, and the 
king had his hands fnll to maintain peace and order. 

A horrible villain named Fieschi, and two or three others, 
25 



386 [1830-1848 

made an infernal machine of a number of gun-barrels set 
side by side, and fired them off simultaneously at the king, 
who was passing at the head of a procession. Forty per- 
snos were killed, but the king was not hit, and when the 
explosion was over he said quietly, 

" Let us go on, gentlemen." 

Fieschi was arrested and betrayed his accomplices. He 
had been a thief and bandit ; he was consumed with van- 
ity, and gloried in his deed. After he had turned state's 
evidence against Pepin, his partner in crime, he was told 
that it was dinner-time. 

" Dinner !" he cried. " I have dined already. I have 
dined off Pepin's head." 

He laughed while the judge was pronouncing his sen- 
tence. When he got a chance he struck an attitude and 
declaimed, 

" In a few days my head will be severed from my body. 
I shall be dead, and my body will rot in the earth. Yet I 
have rendered a service. After me, no more assassina- 
tions, no more disturbances." 

He was a poor prophet. Louis Philippe was always 
being shot at by cranks to the end of his reign. 

It was under his reign that France conquered Algeria. 
And it was while he was king that the remains of Napo- 
leon were brought back from St. Helena, which, as you 
will see by and by, was not quite so grand a thing as people 
thought at the time. It was also while he was beginning 
his management of France that two of the famous French- 
men of the revolutionary era came to their end — Lafayette 
and Talleyrand. 

I suppose that Lafayette was the most beautiful char- 
acter of that time. He began life as an officer in Wash- 
ington's army in 17 TV, and ended it as a private adviser 
of Louis Philippe in 1834. During all those fifty-seven 
years, he never did or said anything that was not wise 
and manly and loyal and unselfish. When the brutality 
of the Jacobins forced him to leave his army, he went to 



1830-1848] 387 

Austria, whose emperor shut him up in a dark and damp 
dungeon at Olmiitz. For a long time no one knew what 
had become of him. The Austrian s would not tell where 
he was. When his plight was discovered President Wash- 
ington wrote personally to the Emperor of Austria beg- 
ging for his release, and Mr. Fox, the famous member of 
Parliament in England, wrote also ; the emperor would 
not listen to either. But one day l^apoleon took the 
matter in hand, and in his short, sharp, stern way sent his 
compliments to the emperor, and would he be so kind as 
to set Lafayette at liberty, and pretty quickly too? Where- 
upon the prison doors flew open, and the captive walked 
out into the open air after five years of dungeon life. He 
was grateful to his liberator, but his principle was so high 
that he refused to serve in the imperial army. 

Talleyrand was very different. He was a lame man, 
and was a prince, a priest, a wit, and in his private life a 
reprobate. Queen Marie Antoinette, Mirabeau, Robes- 
pierre, ISTapoleon, the Emperor of Russia, Louis the Eigh- 
teenth, Charles the Tenth, Louis Philippe, and Thiers, in 
their turn, all leaned on him for advice. He knew every- 
body and everything, cared for nobody, respected nobody ; 
but was feared by everybody, and was prodigiously wise 
and far-seeing. There is a curious story about his last 
end. When he died it was resolved to embalm him, and 
to do so, as you know, it was necessary to remove the soft 
parts of the body, including the brain. When this had 
been done, the embalmer carried off the shell of Talley- 
rand, and his assistants buried the inside, which had been 
taken out. By some oversight, the brain was left where it 
had been placed. A servant who entered the room found 
this grewsome and bloody object on the table, and, not 
dreaming what it was, swept it into a bucket, carried it 
downstairs, and threw it into a gutter. Thus the brain 
which had swayed Europe and moulded politics for fifty 
years finally fetched up in the slops of a filthy drain. 

After Louis Philippe had been some- years on the throno 



388 [1830-1848 

the people began to clamor for a larger share in the gov- 
ernment, while the king thought they had too large a share 
already. He said, 

" I will not be caught as Charles the Tenth was ; I will 
take precautions and defend myself better." 

On February 22d, 1848, the streets of Paris filled with 
people, and barricades began to lift their heads. The king 
had thirty thousand soldiers at his command, and in the 
afternoon he called out the national guards or militia. 
They refused to stir. The king offered to sacrifice his 
ministry ; the leader of the people said it was too late for 
that. At about nine in the evening a regiment opened 
fire on the crowd and killed a hundred men. The spark 
kindled a blaze. From eleven o'clock till midnight every 
church-bell rang the alarm. 

When next morning dawned fifteen hundred barricades, 
made of paving-stones, had been erected, some of them as 
high as the second story of the houses, and every regiment 
was besieged where it stood. 

Thoroughly frightened at last, the king agreed to ab- 
dicate. But it was too late even for that. Musketry fire 
all round the Tuileries drowned the sound of voices. The 
mob was drawing nearer and nearer. Through the crowd, 
Creraieux, a lawyer, forced his way, and said to the king, 

" Sire, you must leave Paris !" 

Without answering a word, Louis Philippe threw off 
his uniform and his general's hat, put on a frock-coat and 
a round hat, and hurried through the Tuileries to a gate 
where four carriages should have been waiting. They 
were not there ; the mob had seized and burned them. A 
carriage coming up with the king's daughters-in-law and 
their children in it, Louis Philippe stepped up and called, 

" Get out, all of you !" 

He got in himself with his wife, and bade the coachman 
drive to Versailles. On the way he threw off his wig, and 
put on a skull-cap which came down to his eyes. At Ver- 
sailles he got another carriage, and drove on through the 



1830-1848] 389 

night ; toward morning he stopped at a farm-house. A 
fire was lit for him in the kitchen. He said, 

" I am very cold ; I am very hungry." 

Said the farmer, " Would you like some onion soup ?" 

"Very much indeed." 

And he ate heartily. 

He was in an agony lest the revolutionists should catch 
him. They were in an equal agony lest he should be 
caught. Thej^ sent trusty messengers to guard him with- 
out his knowledge; they sent him money. They never let 
him out of the sight of their men until they got him safely 
on board a steamer, which hoisted anchor at once (the cap- 
tain had his instructions) and landed him next morning 
in Eno-land. The men who had overthrown him breathed 
more freely when they knew that he was safe. 



Chapter LYI 

ANOTHER REPUBLIC 
A.D. 1848-1852 

When Louis Philippe left there was no government in 
France. To carry on the public business a few of the 
leading republicans formed themselves into a provisional 
government ; they were the poet Lamartine, Etienne Ara- 
go, Garnier-Pages, Marie, who were reasonable republicans; 
Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc, who were inclined to so- 
cialism; and a labor-agitator named Albert. The chief 
talker of the party was Lamartine, who delivered beauti- 
ful speeches which meant nothing ; the work of restoring 
order out of the prevailing confusion fell chiefly to Arago, 
Garnier-Pages, and Marie. 

The trouble of the hour was the vast number of men 
who had been thrown out of work by the disturbances at 
the close of Louis Philippe's reign and by the revolution 
which ensued. These people threatened to set the guillo- 
tine going again if they could not find work, and Louis 
Blanc, the man Albert, and others pretended to have dis- 
covered that the government owed every man work, as 
though any state could live by taking money out of one 
pocket and putting it into another. The provisional gov- 
ernment, howcA^er, did not feel strong enough to engage in 
a conflict with this vast, noisy mob ; it enrolled several 
thousand of them in a guard called the Guard Mobile, and 
it opened government factories at which other thousands 
were employed in making things which were not wanted. 

This plan, of course, could not work long. The govern- 
ment itself was in straits for money, and was in no posi- 
tion to support people by charity. In a short while the 



1848-1852] 391 

government factories had to be closed, and the workmen 
were thrown on the street. They declared that they would 
start another revolution, and that property should be taken 
from those who owned it and divided among those who 
had nothing, in order that all should be equal. When 
this nonsense began to be talked openly, the provisional 
government knew that it must fight or surrender. And, 
at the same time, the workmen were as good as their word ; 
they made ready for the fray. 

The government appointed to the command of its army 
a tried and valiant soldier named Cavaignac, who was a 
sincere republican and a man of sense and honor. The 
workmen were led by Louis Blanc, who was a visionary ; 
Barbes, who was a murderer ; Raspail, who was a crank 
druggist ; and Blanqui, who had spent his life in prison and 
had become paralyzed in his legs. These people did not 
know what they wanted ; they said that there were a hun- 
dred thousand men in Paris who had no work and no bread, 
and that when such was the case something must be wrong. 

You know that it is no part of the business of any 
government to feed its people, and that when riots and 
disturbances occur daily, industry stops and workmen go 
hungry. The Paris workmen were complaining of the 
consequences of their own acts. If they had been less 
disorderly, they would have more easily found work. But 
the poor, hungry fellows were in an angry mood, and 
demagogues — who wanted to pull everything down in the 
hope of finding plunder in the ruins — persuaded them that 
they would gain by rising in arms. Accordingly, on June 
23d and 24th, four months after the establishment of the 
provisional government, they began to build barricades 
once more. Cavaignac sadly but resolutely ordered out 
his troops. 

On June the 26th the battle was over, and the insur- 
gents were crushed. It had not been done without sacri- 
fice of life. About two thousand of the workmen had been 
killed, as many wounded, and some eleven thousand made 



392 [1848-1852 

j)risoners ; and they on their side had killed a number of 
generals and leading men, and worse than all, the Arch- 
bishop of Paris, who had not an enemy in the world, and 
was beloved by every one in Paris. The good old priest 
had gone to a barricade to appeal to the workmen ; some 
felon hand aimed a shot at him from a window, and he 
fell with his gray hair dabbled with blood. 

When the rebellion was ended Cavaignac laid down his 
power and proposed to return to private life, but the pro- 
visional government insisted on his retaining control of 
affairs for a time. An Assembly had been elected, and it 
was engaged in framing a new constitution for France. 
When the work was completed, it was submitted to the 
people and accepted. 

An election for j^resident was held on December 11th, 
and, by a large majority, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was 
elected president over Cavaignac, whom the workmen 
could not forgive for his victory over their "brothers." 
Of Louis Napoleon you will hear much in the next chapter ; 
here it may be enough to say that when he was sworn in 
he offered his hand to Cavaignac, who turned his back and 
walked away. Cavaignac was a good judge of men. 

Before you pass to the reign of Louis Napoleon, you must 
give credit to the kings who governed France between 
1815 and 1850 for the eminent writers who flourished in 
their reigns. First among these was Victor Hugo, equally 
famous as a poet, philosopher, and writer of novels ; then, 
when you learn French, you will read with delight the 
poems of Lamartine and Alfred de Musset ; among his- 
torians, you will enjoy Guizot, Thiers, Thierry ; among 
philosophers, Comte, St. Simon, Lamennais ; among novel- 
writers, Balzac, Dumas the elder, Cherbuliez, Alfred de 
Vigny, Octave Feuillet, Zola, and others ; among men of 
science. Ampere, Gay de Lussac, Biot, Champollion, Pois- 
son. At no time in French history was the French mind 
more active or more fertile than during the reign of Louis 
Philippe, and I cannot think that a reign is inglorious of 
which so much can be said. 




LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A YOUNG OFFICER 



Chapter LVII 

THE SECOND EMPIRE 
A.D. 1852-1871 

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was the son of Louis 
Bonaparte, at one time King of Holland, and of his wife 
Hortense Beauharnais, daughter of the Empress Josephine. 
He was born in 1808. 

After he reached manhood he lived much in England, 
where people thought meanly of him. He was regarded 
as a dreamer and a crank. He used to say that he was 
predestined to succeed his uncle as emperor of the French, 
and, as at the time he could not pay his tailor, people 
laughed at him. They laughed the more when he tried to 
get up an insurrection at Strasburg, and was promptly ar- 
rested and sent out. of France in contemptuous pity; and 
when he repeated his attempt at Boulogne — where he land- 
ed with a tame eagle in his hand, to remind people of the 
eagle which Napoleon's soldiers carried on their standard 
= — he was caught again and locked up in a prison at Ham, 



394 [1852-1871 

Even when he made his escape in the disguise of a car- 
penter and turned up at Paris, after the overthrow of 
Louis Philippe, nobody took him seriously. It was pro- 
posed to expel him from France, but when he made a 
speech in his own defence, the deputy who had proposed 
the expulsion withdrew his motion, saying that he had 
once imagined the gentleman to be dangerous, but now, 
having heard him, he felt satisfied he was harmless. 

This was the man who, on December 11th, 1848, became 
President of France. He had risen to that rank through 
the power of money and intrigue, and through a lingering 
fondness among the French for the memory of Napoleon, 
which the importation of his remains from St. Helena had 
helped to foster. 

The new president had hardly got seated in the presi- 
dential chair when he began a duel with the Chamber, 
which was evidently to be a fight to a finish. Each side 
accused the other of plotting treason. On one side was 
Louis Napoleon, cold, calculating, silent as the grave, bent 
on treading in his uncle's footsteps ; on the other were the 
members of the Chamber, loyal, honest, unselfish, loud- 
spoken, and boisterous, having nothing to conceal. Napo- 
leon began by dismissing from his cabinet three ministers 
who were known to be loyal to the republic, and replacing 
them by General St. Arnaud, De Moriiy, and Maupas, three 
unprincipled and resolute knaves, upon whom he could 
rely for any deed of darkness. St. Arnaud was set over 
the army ; he told the soldiers that the new Napoleon 
would be as liberal to them as the old Napoleon had been ; 
Maupas was set over the police, and De Morny looked out 
fo*" things generally. Other friends of Napoleon went 
about calling the Assembly a nest of demagogues who were 
plotting a new revolution. This frightened business-men 
and working-men. 

On the evening of December 1st, 1851, a party was 
given at the palace of the Elysee, where the president 
lived. All Paris was thev§ in diamonds and laces and 




CLEARING THE PARIS STREETS 



smiles. One lady, who stole away for an hour to visit the 
opera, met De Morny there, and said to him, 

" I hear that there is to be a clean sweep pretty soon." 

" Indeed, madame ?" replied De Morny ; " if there is 
any sweeping done, I hope I will be on the side of the broom- 
handle." 

At midnight, after the guests had gone home, Louis 
Napoleon, De Morny, St. Arnaud, and Maupas met in an 
inner room of the palace. The president sat close to the 
fire, with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. 
He said never a word. The others talked violently and 
loudly; they only spoke to the president when they wanted 
money from him to buy the colonels of certain regiments. 

At two that morning the printers of the Moniteur, each 
printer with two policemen standing over him, set up a 
proclamation from Louis Napoleon, abolishing the constitu- 



396 [1852-18'71 

tion, dissolving the Chambers, declaring martial law, and 
proposing to the people to elect their chief magistrate for 
ten years. When the winter day broke, this proclamation 
was found posted all over the walls of Paris. At four that 
morning, Thiers, Cavaignac, Changarnier, Lamoriciere, and 
eighteen other leading republicans whom the people trust- 
ed, were seized in their beds and carried off to prison. 
With the first glimmer of daylight the other members of 
the Chamber met, and declared that Louis Napoleon had 
broken his oath and forfeited his office ; whereupon they 
were all arrested by soldiers, and locked up with Thiers 
and his friends. This is called the Coup d'Etat. 

On the following morning the people — including most 
of those who had voted for Louis Napoleon in preference 
to Cavaignac — fell to building barricades in the old way. 
This was what Louis Napoleon wanted. He gathered fifty 
thousand soldiers, flung them on the barricaders, and slaugh- 
tered them mercilessly. The work of slaughter went on all 
night. When day broke on the 5th, the pavements of Paris 
were soaked in blood, corpses lay stretched out in rows, 
and in one cemetery, where three hundred and fifty un- 
known men were buried, their heads were left sticking out 
of the ground, so that their friends could recognize them. 
What was done in Paris was done in every town in France 
where the Coup d'Etat was opposed. 

France, cowed and trembling, quickly voted that the 
Coup d'Etat was a divine blessing, and prepared for the 
next act in the drama. It was not long delayed. 

Li October, 1852, Louis Napoleon spoke as follows at 
Bordeaux : , 

"France seems to be returning to the empire. That is 
because the empire is peace, and France desires peace." 

One month afterward the Senate, which Louis Napoleon 
had appointed, drew up an address proposing to abolish 
the republic and restore the empire ; the question being 
submitted to the people, they voted by a large majority 
for the empire ; and on December 2d, 1852, Louis Napo- 



1852-1871] S97 

leon was crowned emperor with the title of Napoleon the 
Third, the poor boy who had died at Vienna being ac- 
counted Napoleon the Second. 

In order to found a dynasty, he married ; his wife was 
beautiful and bright, a Spanish lady, whose name was 
Eugenie of Montijo. Next year this lady gave him a son, 
who grew up to be a fine, manly lad. He was educated in 
England, and when the English went to war with the 
Zulus of South Africa, he joined their army and was killed 
just as his manhood was beginning. 

During the early years of his reign Napoleon the Third 
labored faithfully to make France prosperous and Paris 
beautiful. Millions were spent in pulling down the old 
rookeries where revolutions had been hatched, and cutting 
splendid boulevards through their sites. Industries of all 
kinds were encouraged, and, as he was a wise statesman, 
he established free trade with England and tried to estab- 
lish it with other countries. He promoted enterprise, and 
under him speculation became active. Vast fortunes were 
made, and spent lavishly ; everybody in France appeared 
to be well off ; and, though the national and city debts 
were growing, everybody was satisfied, and the empire was 
pronounced to be an excellent thing. 

Being a Bonaparte, however, and owing much to the 
army, he could not help plunging into wars. His first 
war was with Russia and was undertaken jointly with 
England. There was no reasonable ground for the war; 
but it lasted a couple of years, cost numbers of lives, and 
ended in the capture and destruction of the chief seaport 
and arsenal of south Russia — Sebastopol. 

Then he made war upon Austria — perhaps to redeem a 
promise he had made to Mazzini, when he was at Ham, to 
establish a kingdom for Italy; he took the command of his 
armies himself, won two splendid victories at Magenta and 
Solferino, and freed all Italy, except Venice, from the Aus- 
trian yoke. So here was more glory, and people bes:an to 
say that the Third Napoleon was as brilliant a soldier as 
the First. 



398 [1852-18'71 

Then he turned on China, which he invaded jointly with 
the English, marched to Pekin, looted and burned the em- 
peror's palace, and the French again said that wherever 
his eagles went victory perched uj)on their crest. 

But this was rather a mistake, as they found out when, 
shortly afterward, the emperor made war upon Mexico. 
Our civil war was drawing to a close, and Mr. Lincoln and 
the people of the North had no love for Napoleon, because 
they knew that he had been in his heart in favor of the 
rebels, and that if it had depended on him the Union would 
have been destroyed. When Richmond fell Mr. Seward 
wrote a short, sharp letter to Paris, advising the emperor 
to take his troops out of Mexico by the shortest available 
road ; and, by way of giving point to the letter, Mr. Lin- 
coln ordered General Sherman to move with fifty thousand 
men to the bank of the Rio Grande. Marshal Bazaine, 
who commanded the French in Mexico, did not wait to be 
introduced to General Sherman ; he re-embarked his army 
at once and returned to France. His return gave a shock 
to the French ; they began to ask whether it was possible 
the emperor was not the all-conquering hero they had ac- 
counted him. The very men who had shouted loudest in 
praise of the empire now began to find a good deal of fault 
with it. 

The emperor bowed to the storm and began to make 
concessions to the people. He let them have a little share 
in managing the government and let the press speak a little 
more freely. He said that he had been much misunder- 
stood—that he had been all along in favor of giving the 
fullest liberty to the French, and that he had merely taken 
power into his own hands to distribute it to the people in 
the right doses and at the right time. 

But he soon had other concerns to occupy his mind. 
France and Prussia were drifting into war. There was a 
shallow pretext — a dispute about the selection of a prince 
of the Hohenzollern family to be King of Spain. France 
protested against the Hohenzollern, and the King of Prus- 




NAPOLEON m 



sia required him to decline the throne, but France was not 
satisfied. The fact was, the people of both countries hated 
each other and were eager for the fray — the French, be- 
cause they thought they saw in the future visions of glory 
and conquest ; the Prussians, because they remembered 
their defeats sixty years before and had forgotten the 
vengeance they took for them. Chancellor Bismarck, prime- 
minister of Prussia, had foreseen the war for two years or 
more and had been preparing for it. In France, I am 
sorry to say that the mad rage of the people for an unpro- 
voked war was fanned by a woman — the Empress Eugenie. 

She went about saying, 

"It is my war !" 

And when mobs passed her windows shouting "On to 



400 [1852-18'71 

Berlin !" she clapped her hands. She was a good woman, 
but she did France a terrible mischief. What she did not 
know was, that Germany was ready and France was not. 
The army on which she and the emperor had counted ex- 
isted only on paper. The generals had drawn pay for 
troops who did not exist in the flesh. 

War was declared on July 19th, 1870. By July 31st 
Prussia had half a million of men on the Rhine. The Em- 
peror Napoleon never had half as many in one spot. He 
issued a proclamation in which he said : 

" Soldiers ! I am about to place myself at your head, to 
defend the honor and soil of the country. Whatever road 
we take beyond our frontiers, we shall find glorious traces 
of our fathers. The fate of liberty and civilization de- 
pends upon our success." 

Von Moltke, the German general, issued no proclama- 
tion, but he said to the King of Prussia, 

"If Napoleon does not cross the Rhine in a fortnight 
he will never cross it, except as a prisoner." 

There was a fight early in August at Weissenberg, an- 
other at Worth, another at Saarbruch, another at Forbach ; 
at each of these the Germans were two to one, and the 
French were beaten. The latter fell back, and were again 
attacked at Gravelotte, and one of their two armies, under 
Bazaine, was driven into Metz, where it was bottled up 
and took no further part in the war. The other army, 
which was commanded by MacMahon and with which the 
emperor was serving, was pushed into Sedan, was surround- 
ed there and compelled to surrender. 

On September 2d an ofiicer brought a letter from the 
emperor to the King of Prussia, which began with the 
words, 

" Having been unable to die at the head of my troops, I 
give up my sword to your majesty." 

Every man of MacMahon's army, including the emperor 
himself, became a prisoner and was sent into Germany. I 
think %\x3^% while you must blame the emperor for having 



1852-1871] 401 

undertaken an unjust war, and while you must regard him 
as insincere and an enemy of freedom, you would have 
been sorry for him then. He had never liked the war. 
He had been driven into it by the empress and the Paris 
mob. He had never felt sure of victory. He was suffer- 
ing from a dreadful disease, which gave him constant and 
acute agony and of which he afterward died. There is a 
picture of his meeting with the King of Prussia, in which 
the German, tall and erect, with his fierce moustache and 
his scowling eyes, frowns upon the emperor, who looks 
like a shrunken old man, bent from pain and grief, and 
with a face distorted by suffering. I think it is a very 
sad picture. 

When the news of the capture of the emperor reached 
Paris the republic was again proclaimed ; but the Ger- 
man armies besieged the place, and took it after a four 
months' siege, during which the people endured such mis- 
ery from famine that they not only ate all the horses in the 
city, but also the wild animals in the Garden of Plants. 
Peace was made at last, the Germans went home, and after 
a long struggle a new republic was founded. 



Chapter LVIII 
THE THIRD REPUBLIC 

A.D. 1871-1914 

The Third Republic had been established, with the great 
French statesman Thiers as its first president, but there were 
still many disputed matters to be settled. The Germans had 
imposed very severe terms upon France in the treaty of peace' 
signed at Versailles. The two provinces of Alsace and Lor- 
raine, comprising some of the most important manufacturing 
districts in the country, were to become the absolute property 
of the new German Empire. Their inhabitants had but one 
choice in the matter — to emigrate or to accept German na- 
tionality. Their very language must be given up, since it was 
forbidden to teach French in any of the public schools of Alsace- 
Lorraine. In addition to the loss of these two rich provinces 
a war indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs, or one billion dol- 
lars, was imposed, and the German army of occupation would 
remain in France until the last centime was paid. 

Gambetta, Freycinet, and Thiers had protested against 
these severe conditions in the peace treaty, but the Germans 
were the victors and they would not abate one jot or tittle of 
their demands. The French leaders had to submit, but when 
the people of Paris learned of the humiliations that had been 
placed upon them they were so angry that a revolution broke 
out against the government. The insurrection began on 
March 18, 1871, and lasted until the end of May. Again 
barricades were set up in the streets and the- gutters ran red 
with blood. Tiie Commune, as the insurrectionists styled 
themselves, managed to keep the upper hand for over two 
months, and poor Paris had to endure a second Reign of Terror. 
True, there was no actual guillotine set up in the Place de la 
Concorde, but over thirty thousand persons perished in the 



1871-1914] 403 

fighting or were executed under a mockery of judicial procedure. 
But finally the soldiers of the Republic signally defeated the 
rabble of thieves, riffraff, crooks, criminals, and "apaches'* 
that made up the bulk of the Commune, and law and order 
were restored. 

A great task of readjustment still remained to be accom- 
pUshed, but the French people were equal to it. In less than 
five months the}^ had paid off, from their personal savings 
hidden in old stockings and teapots, the enormous war in- 
demnity of a billion dollars. Remember, too, that this was 
nearly fifty years ago, when the purchasing power of money 
was much greater than it is to-day. The indemnity was paid 
to Germany in bright new twenty-franc pieces, and the story 
goes that these actual coins were held by Germany until 
August, 1914, as an emergency war chest. The treasure was 
packed in wooden boxes and kept in a mediaeval stronghold 
called the Julius Tower, a part of the citadel of Spandau, a 
fortified town at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers. 
Of course a strong guard of soldiers was kept in the fortress 
to protect the 'Svar chest," and there the money lay, doing 
nobody any good, until the outbreak of the great world war. 
Presumably, it has long since been used up, for even a billion 
dollars does not last long under the vast daily expenditures of 
modern warfare. 

With the payment of the indemnity the German armj^ of 
occupation was withdrawn, in September, 1872, and France 
was again free to take up the pursuits of peace. So industrious 
and thrifty are the French, by nature and by training, that the 
financial readjustment was accomplished in a marvellously short 
time. A government loan launched after the payment of the 
indemnity, and the second since the conclusion of the war, was 
oversubscribed fourteen times. Nothing so remarkable in the 
way of recuperation from a great national disaster had ever 
before been known, and the whole world looked on in wonder. 
But although material prosperitj^ had returned, the pride and 
honor of France had been deeply wounded, and there were 
certain things that a true Frenclunan could never forget. Chief 
among these were the two lost provinces — Alsace and Lor- 



404 [1871-1914 

raine. With the sword Germany had wrested them away 
from France, and with the sword she continued to hold them. 
But some day they must come back to France, for they were 
part of her national life. In the great square of the Place de 
la Concorde in Paris there are a number of heroic statues 
typifying the principal cities of France. Conspicuous among 
them stood the statue named for the city of Strasburg in 
Alsace. But the Germans now possessed Strasburg; it was 
no longer a French city. And yet the Parisians refused to 
take down or destroy the statue. Instead, they draped it with 
crepe, and on all national holidays fresh funeral wreaths were 
heaped about its pedestal and base. Thousands of visiting 
Americans in the last half-century have gone to see the Stras- 
burg statue, beautiful and pathetic in its garb of mourning. 
But those daj^s of humiliation and sorrow are now forever 
ended. The funeral wreaths have given place to garlands of 
fresh flowers; the statue has resumed her rightful place among' 
her sister cities; Strasburg has been redeemed, and once 
again the tricolor floats from the tower of its wonderful old 
Gothic cathedral. All things come to him who waits. 

Yes, France had survived the shock of war and the loss of 
her provinces, and the Third Republic seemed destined to 
endure. It took nearly four years to formulate the new con- 
stitution, but at last, in 1875, it was formally accepted by the 
country. In 1878 Paris held a brilhant Universal Exhibition, 
or fair, in which all the nations of Europe, and indeed of the 
world, participated. To commemorate the event the imposing 
Palace of the Trocadero was built. It is approached by a 
broad and splendid street, formerly called the Avenue du Tro- 
cadero, but now renamed the Avenue du President Wilson, as 
a compliment to the United States, upon our entrance into the 
world war. 

Eleven years later, in 1889, Paris was again the hostess for 
a World's Fair. The outstanding feature of this exhibition 
was the Eiffel Tower, designed by French engineers to be the 
tallest structure in the world, and it still retains that distinc- 
tion. The tower measures 984 feet from the ground, almost 
double the height of the Washington Monument, But theii 



1871-1914] 405 

the latter is built of marble, while the Eiffel Tower is con- 
structed, like a railway bridge, of iron trusses, columns, and 
girders. 

Napoleon the Third could hardly be called a great and good 
man, and yet he did much for his country in a material way, 
and he gave countenance and assistance to many philanthropic 
and charitable enterprises. During the life of the Third Empire 
old-age pensions were instituted for indigent laborers, free 
medical service was provided in remote country districts, the 
railways and the telegraph lines were greatly extended, a sys- 
tem of coast patrols and lighthouses was perfected, and over 
two thousand miles of main highways and seventy-five thousand 
miles of narrower intersecting roads were constructed. But the 
crowning achievement of Napoleon the Third's reign was the 
digging of the Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean and 
Red seas. The honor of conceiving and carrying out this 
stupendous piece of engineering work belongs to Ferdinand 
de Lesseps, a French engineer, and it was France that defrayed 
the greater part of the enormous expense of the undertaking. 
The canal was opened to the commerce of the world in 1869, 
and it shortened the way to the Orient by several thousands 
of miles. 

The Emperor was especially concerned with municipal 
improvement in the city of Paris. Under the old conditions 
many quarters of the city were most congested and unsanitary. 
Under the plans and guidance of Baron Haussmann, Napoleon the 
Third had magnificent boulevards or wide avenues cut straight 
through the heart of these wretched slums, letting in the bright 
sunshine and fresh air, and so totally transforming them. 
Among the most celebrated of these splendid new streets may 
be mentioned the Boulevards Saint-Michel, Saint-Germain, and 
Haussmann, familiar to all American globe-trotters. 

The famous Paris Opera House is another of Napoleon the 
Third's inspirations. Although it seats only 2,158 people, it 
covers almost three acres of ground and is the largest and most 
sumptuously decorated and furnished theater in the world. 

Still another of ^'Napoleon the Little's" gifts to Paris is the 
city park kjio\vn ^^ the Bois (or Wood) de I3oulogne, It i§ 



406 [1871-1914 

a beautiful and profusely wooded area of 2,250 acres, or near- 
ly three times the size of Central Park in New York City. 

The Republic has had its troubles as well as its triumphs. 
During the years 1889-1892 all France was shaken by a great 
scandal arising from the gross mismanagement and failure of 
a company organized by Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had won 
great fame by the successful construction of the Suez Canal, 
for the digging of a similar canal at the Isthmus of Panama. 
After the expenditure of upward of $260,000,000, with the 
work in a very unsatisfactory condition, the company became 
bankrupt. It then developed that bribery and corruption on 
a scale as gigantic as the undertaking itself had been resorted 
to by the promoters of the enterprise. Prosecutions followed. 
Among those condemned to severe punishment was Ferdinand 
de Lesseps himself. He was already dying from age and worry 
when this final blow fell upon him. It was a pathetic ending 
of a career which, aside from this last deplorable incident, is 
one of the most illustrious in modern French history. 

Dangerous political intrigues on the part of Bourbon and 
Bonapartist claimants to the throne of France made it neces- 
sary, in 1886, to expel from the country all persons in the direct 
line of succession from the Bourbon kings and Bonapartist em- 
perors. While the severity of this decree was afterward greatly 
modified, service in the army and navy of the Republic is still 
denied to the members of the old monarchical famihes. 

Between the State and the Church (Catholic) friction had 
existed for many years. But finally the secular power triumphed. 
In 1880 the convents and schools of the Jesuits were closed and 
the society itself was expelled from France. In 1903 fifty-four 
religious orders of men, embracing teaching, preaching, and 
commercial associations, were suppressed. Over two thousand 
convents were closed. The wisdom as well as the justice of this 
complete secularization of public education is certainly open 
to question. 

In the year 1881, under the pretext of defending her Algerian 
frontier against the raids of the mountain tribes of Tunis on 
the east, France sent troops into that country and established 
a protectorate over it. This act of hers deeply offended the 



1871-1914] 407 

Italians, who had had their eye upon this district, regarding it as 
belonging to them by virtue of its geographical position as well 
as its historical traditions. 

An even more delicate situation developed in 1898 when 
Captain Marchand, a French army officer, raised his national 
flag over African territory which Great Britain claimed as a 
part of her Egyptian protectorate. The Fashoda incident held 
a prominent place for a while on the stage of world affairs, but 
happily England and France had too much sense to actually 
go to war over a question of land-grabbing. That supreme 
folly was to be committed by the Prussian Junkers and mili- 
tary overlords of 1914. 

A few more years of peace and prosperity for La Belle France 
and then came the terrible catastrophe of the world war. 



Chapter LIX 
THE WORLD WAR 

A.D. 1914-1917 

When, on June 28, 1914, the young Serbian anarchist, Prin- 
zep, fired the revolver-shot at Sarajevo which resulted in the 
death of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir presumptive 
to the thrones of Austria and Hungary (his wife being also a 
victim of the assassin's bullets), no one outside of Germany 
had any idea of the terrible and far-reaching consequences that 
were shortly to follow. But the Prussian war party had been 
waiting for just such an opportunity. For years the toast of 
Der Tag (The Day) had been drunk, with all the honors, in 
every military and naval mess-room of the empire; the officers, 
trained under the iron regime of Junkerism, were thirsting to 
unsheath tlieir swords for the winning of unlimited loot and 
glory; the Emperor WiUiam II had declared that Germany must 
and should have her place in the sun. The great Teuton war- 
machine, which had taken over forty years to perfect, was now 
ready for use; The Day had arrived. 

There must always be two parties to every quarrel, but 
at first Germany stood alone in her wish to precipitate the con- 
flict. Even Austria-Hungary would never have dared to bring 
about the crisis consequent upon her insulting note to Serbia 
of July 23, 1916, had it not been for Germany standing in the 
background and relentlessly egging her on. Great Britain, 
Russia, France — none of these great nations wanted war with 
all its attendant miseries and horrors; and, as the diplomatic 
documents conclusively show, they made every possible effort 
to avoid it. Russia had indeed protested against the annexa- 
tion of Serbian territory by Austria, but the Czar had signified 
his willingness to have the whole matter submitted to The 
Hague for arbitration. Serbia had replied in conciliatory terms 



1914-1917] 409 

to the Austrian note, and the one real obstacle in the way of a 
peaceful settlement was Germany. But that obstacle was an 
immovable one; Germany was out to win the overlordship of 
the world, and nothing could stop her. The Prussian military 
party had laid their plans with the utmost care and they did 
not believe that a miscarriage could be possible. Within a 
month the German army would be in Paris and the war would 
be over. And, as events showed, they were very nearly right; 
it was only a veritable miracle that saved civilization from being 
ground to powder under the iron heel of the Prussian jack-boot. 

Austria declared war against Serbia on Tuesday, July 28, 
1914. The Czar ordered the complete mobihzation of his army 
on July 30th, and on August 1st Germany set the world aflame 
by her declaration of war on Russia. 

Obviously there could be no European war with Germany 
an active participant that would not mean danger to France; 
sooner or later Frenchmen and Germans must renew their 
hereditary struggle. Now the northwestern frontier of France 
was protected by a strong chain of modern forts, such as Bel- 
fort, Rethel, Verdun, Nancy, and Toul, but where Belgium 
was the international neighbor the way, in a military sense, 
was open. The protection in this quarter was the official 
permanent neutrality of Belgium, which had been guaranteed 
long since by all the great powers, including Germany. On 
Monday, August 3d, Belgium reaffirmed its neutral position 
and its firm purpose to defend its soil from invasion by France, 
Germany, England, or indeed any other nation. The same 
day Germany and France made mutual declarations of war. 

The situation then was as follows: the objective point of the 
German strategy was Paris, the acknowledged capital of civili- 
zation, but to attack from the direction of the Rhine provinces 
meant that the strong French fortresses must be successively 
besieged and taken. This would entail delay and give the 
French a chance to mobilize their mihtary forces. But there 
was another way, an easy and undefended one, through the 
tiny grand-duchy of Luxemburg, across Belgium, and thence 
into the rich northern provinces of France. There was only 
one difficulty — the neutrality gf Belgium, Germany requested 



410 [1914-1917 

permission to send her troops through Belgium, promising to 
pay for all damage done and offering substantial favors for the 
future. But Belgium would not sell her honor and she refused 
the proposition with scorn. The Teutonic soul found it difficult 
to understand these niceties of a national conscience. "What!'^ 
exclaimed Chancellor von Bethmann-HoUweg to Sir Edward 
Vochen, British Ambassador at Berlin, "is it the purpose of 
your country to make war upon Germany for the sake of a 
scrap of paper?" Yes, only a "scrap of paper," but it was to 
make all the difference between an immortality of honor and of 
dishonor. Even von Bethmann-HoUweg admitted the weak- 
ness of his case when, later on, he acknowledged in a speech 
before the German Reichstag, or parliament, that the invasion 
of Belgium was "a wrong that we will try to make good again 
so soon as our miUtary ends have been reached." 

The actual invasion of Belgium began on the morning of 
August 4th, when twelve regiments of Uhlans crossed the fron- 
tier near Vise and came into contact with a Belgian force, 
driving it back upon Li^ge. England served an ultimatum upon 
Germany, and, as the German Foreign Office made no reply, the 
declaration of war immediately followed. 

The German attack upon France was terrible in its celerity 
and brutal power. Twenty-four army corps, divided into three 
main divisions, the soldiers clad in a specially designed and 
colored gray-green uniform, swept in three mighty streams over 
the German borders, having as their objective the heart of 
France. The Army of the Meuse was given the route through 
Belgium— Liege, Namur, and Maubeuge. The Army of the 
Moselle violated the territory of the grand-duchy of Luxem- 
burg, which, under a treaty guaranteeing its independence and 
neutrality, was not permitted to maintain an army. Germany 
had been a signatory party to this treaty also, but cynically 
waved aside all sentimental appeals to decency and honor. 
The Army of the Rhine cut through the Vosges Mountains and 
was to pass between Nancy and Toul on its way to Paris. 

it was the heroic defence of the little Belgian army at Li^ge 
which delayed the operation of Germany's plans and in all prob- 
ability i^ved P^ris, During those fateful ten days in which 



1914-1917] 4U 

Liege held out the British expeditionary forces were landed in 
France and the French army was mobilized to its full strength. 

But the Belgian military power could offer no prolonged re- 
sistance to the Prussian car of Juggernaut, and by August 20th 
Brussels was in the hands of the enemy. Now for the final 
onslaught upon France and three weeks hence a triumphal 
dinner in Paris! 

The French unwisely had made a sentimental advance into 
Alsace-Lorraine, and their small initial successes had been fol- 
lowed by decisive defeats. And in the mean time the Germans 
were attacking on the line running between Mons and Charleroi; 
opposing them were the ''contemptible Uttle English army'^ 
and the French forces under General Joffre. The Allies fought 
with great bravery, but under the sheer weight of numbers they 
were obliged to retreat. 

On August 24th the Germans entered France near Lille, and 
then came a dreadful fortnight in which the combined French 
and British armies were steadily forced back by von Kluck's 
forces. It seemed as though Paris were doomed to capture, and, 
so critical became the situation, that, on September 3d, the 
government was transferred to Bordeaux. A panic followed. 
Citizens left Paris by the thousands — ^by railways, by motor- 
car, on foot — any way to get away. The banks transferred 
their treasures, the priceless masterpieces of art in the Louvre 
and other galleries were placed in hiding, and Paris set its teeth, 
prepared for the worst. The enemy was now only twenty miles 
away. 

But the miracle happened. General von Kluck, disregarding 
the fortresses surrounding Paris, swung southward to make a 
junction with the army of the Crown Prince of Germany ad- 
vancing through the Vosges Mountains. That manoeuvre left 
his flank exposed. General GaUieni, commanding the garrison 
of Paris, commandeered every taxicab, car, and motor-omnibus 
in the city to carry his soldiers forty miles out to the firing- 
hne. When all was ready General Joffre sprung the trap. 
Either von Kluck must surrender or retreat. He chose the 
latter alternative and the first battle of the Marne (September 
6-lOth) passed into history. The Germans fell back to the 



412 [1914-1917 

Soissons-Hheims line and dug themselves in. Paris was saved, 
but it had been a close call. Many German officers were found 
dead on the battle-field dressed in their gala white uniforms, put 
on to signalize their triumphant entry into Paris. There had 
even been prepared the menu of the "victory" dinner w^hich 
the German Emperor was to eat at his particular corner table 
in a famous Parisian restaurant. But he never ate that dinner. 

Now began the long, wearisome period of trench fighting, 
when for months the hostile armies contended literally for every 
inch of ground. But there are still immortal memories of those 
dull gray days, and chief among them stands the name of Verdun. 

Verdun was the greatest of the modern French fortresses. 
It protected the rich iron-fields of the Briey basin, but it was 
particularly important in that it guarded the direct gateway 
to Paris. The Germans resolved that Verdun must be de- 
stroyed, and under the leadership of the Crown Prince the most 
desperate efforts were made to accomplish this result. The 
siege began on February 19, 1916, and the battle continued 
without intermission until November 2d, when the Germans 
were forced to evacuate Fort Vaux. 

Nothing like the bombardment of Verdun had ever been 
known in military histor^^ From four to five thousand heavy 
guns were in constant operation by the Germans, and the 
weight of metal thro^vn by these monsters is incalculable. 
The Germans had expected that the shell-fire would make the 
French positions untenable and that infantry attacks would not 
be necessary. But the French dug themselves in so thoroughly 
that even the big 12-inch shells could not dislodge them, and 
finally the Prussian leaders had to send their men in wave after 
wave against the twenty-five-mile front of the Verdun earth- 
works to be mowed down in thousands by the famous French 
*'75" light artillery guns. 

All through the summer the battle-cry of Verdun, "iVe passer out 
pasr' ("They shall not pass!") rang out, an undying inspiration 
to the French army and to the world. Then, at last, France 
struck back, and by a brilliant series of attacks Forts Douamont 
and Vaux were recaptured and the long struggle for the pos- 
session of the Verdun salient was at an end. 



1914-1917] 413 

But France had enemies in the rear as well as at the front. 
German propaganda and German gold had done poisonous work, 
and there were traitors even in high places, cowards who cried 
that the Allies could not possibly win the war, pacifists and de- 
featists who were only too ready to stab their country in the 
back. It was necessary to make short work with these miser- 
able creatures. Georges Clemenceau ("the Tiger") had become 
Premier of France, and on January 14, 1918, he ordered the ar- 
rest of Joseph Caillaux, a former premier, on a charge of high 
treason. The trial and execution (April 16th) of Bolo Pasha, 
a Levantine by birth, but a naturalized Frenchman, had also a 
most salutary effect in clearing the moral atmosphere. 

"Frightfuhiess" was a characteristic feature of Germany's 
military policy; they actually believed that by showing them- 
selves to be superhuman bullies and brutes they could cow 
their enemies into submission. A typical example of this stupid 
savagery was the long-distance sheUing of Paris. On March 
23, 1918, nine-inch shells began dropping into the Mont- 
martre district of the city. The nearest Germany artillery base 
was over sixty miles away, and it seemed incredible that any 
gun with such a range existed. But it was soon established that 
the projectiles came from the forest of Saint-Gobain, seventy- 
six miles from Paris, and that they were fired from a specially 
designed Krupp cannon, which was promptly christened "Big 
Bertha" after the rich proprietress of the famous gun-works at 
Essen in Germany. For a month or more some two dozen shells 
fell daily in the Paris streets, with comparatively few casualties. 
But on Good Friday (March 29th) a shell struck the Church of 
Saint-Gervais while service was going on, killing seventy-five 
persons and wounding ninety. Fifty-four of the killed were 
women. There was no military advantage in this slaughter of 
the innocents and the outrage aroused world-wide indignation. 
Early in April the French artillery got the range of the nest 
harboring the three "Big Berthas" and soon put it out of ac- 
tive business. The shell weighed two hundred pounds and it 
took about three minutes for it to travel to Paris; during its 
aerial journey it probably rose to a height of twenty miles 
above the earth. 



414 [1914-1917 

In recalling the heroic exploits of France's defenders we must 
not forget the aviators and their thrilling duels in the clouds. 
The two most famous French air fighters, or "aces," were Georges 
Guynemer and Rene Fouck. Guynemer was a young man of 
such slender and delicate physique that he could not get into 
the regular army. But he was determined to do something 
and he became a ''birdman." They say that after every flight 
he was ill for several hours, but nothing kept him back. When 
he died in his last battle above the clouds he had over a hundred 
victories to his credit. 

Lieutenant Fouck came through the war with a total of 
seventy-five ofl&cial victories and forty more unofficial triumphs. 
In one day he brought down six German planes. Once he shot 
down three Huns in twenty seconds. Truly these men by their 
splendid individual work revived all the ancient glories of 
chivahy. 



Chapter LX 
VICTORY 

A.D. 1917-1918 

The turning point in the war came with the appointment of 
General Foch as Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied forces, 
the date being March 29, 1918. Hitherto the EngHsh and 
French, the Itahan and American forces had only co-operated : 
now they were really to work together. It was high time, for 
the Russian revolution and military collapse had released 
thousands of German regiments for service on the western 
front. It is true that the United States had entered the war, 
but it would be some months before the American forces could 
be transported in any considerable numbers to the shores of 
France. Co-operation was vitally necessary and, fortunately, 
the Allies were agreed upon the right man — General Foch — 
who had already won distinction for the great part he took in 
winning the first battle of the Marne. 

The time was critical. The Germans had prepared great 
quantities of supplies and munitions, and they knew they must 
act quickly, for the Americans were on the way in overwhelming 
numbers. Whereupon the German high command ordered 
three gigantic offensive movements — in Picardy along the 
Somme (March 21, 1918), on the Lys (April 9, 1918), and 
against the Oise-Marne salient (May 27, 1918). 

At enormous cost in human lives the Germans gained a few 
miles on each of these attempts. But nowhere did they suc- 
ceed in breaking through. With each succeeding day the at- 
tack would grow weaker, and finally the drive, as it was called, 
would come to a dead stop. Nevertheless, the advantages ap- 
peared to be on the side of the Germans, and General Foch's 
dilatory and defensive tactics were severely criticised. At the 
beginning of June the Qermans had captured four hundred heavy 



416 [1917-1918 

guns and had taken forty-four thousand prisoners and over six 
hundred and fifty miles of territory. It did look as though they 
were winning, but General Foch knew better; he was convinced 
that the enemy was wearing itself out and that at the proper 
moment he could strike back and win. 

The Germans made one more effort. General Ludendorff 
gathered together seventy divisions of his best troops and drove 
in from Chateau-Thierry on a sixtj^'-mile line up on the Marne, 
and thence east to the Argonne forests. The fighting was of the 
most desperate character. Thousands of great guns were send- 
ing out a constant stream of projectiles which made vast pits 
and craters wherever they fell; thousands of aeroplanes were 
patrolling the skies or dropping bombs on the hostile lines; in- 
numerable batteries of machine-guns were pumping millions 
of bullets into the faces of the advancing troops; everywhere 
there were noise and confusion and death. And yet on June 
17th the Kaiser celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his 
accession to the throne by a vainglorious proclamation and a 
confident prediction of coming victory. 

The fresh American forces had stopped the German advance 
at Chateau-Thierry, and in the Argonne, and the morale of the 
enemy had thereby received a severe shock. It was time for 
Foch to take the initiative and he was ready for the supreme 
test. On August 7th the English and French began a con- 
certed attack. Presently the Germans began to retreat in good 
earnest, abandoning an enormous quantity of ammunition and 
stores; by August 12th some forty thousand prisoners had been 
captured. Town after town fell into the hands of the Allies. 
The Germans were destroying everything as they retreated, 
blowing up churches and houses, cutting down fruit trees, poison- 
ing wells, and leaving infernal-machine traps in innocent-looking 
places. 

Perhaps there would be a handsome gold watch lying on a 
table. But if you attempted to pick it up you would thereby 
set off a bomb which would probably blow you into a thousand 
pieces. And the Germans called this, War! 

The celebrated Hindenburg fine had wonderful defences of 
ferro-cemeut gun-emplacements and barbed-wire entangle- 



1917-1918] 417 

ments. The tunnels and communicating trenches had been 
constructed with extraordinary skill; they were lined and roofed 
with heavy timbers, lighted by electricity, and defended by 
heavy guns. Yet the artillery fire of the Allies finally wiped 
out these impregnable positions and then the soldiers went "over 
the top" and took possession. 

All through September and October the Germans steadily 
retreated and the Allies as steadily advanced. By November 
1st the beginning of the end was plainly in sight. Bulgaria and 
Turkey had already succumbed, and now came the smashing 
Italian offensive that brought Austria to her knees begging 
for an armistice; the back door of Germany was at last open 
to the Allies. 

There is little reason to doubt that soon General Foch would 
have turned the German retreat into the most disastrous defeat 
and rout known in all history. But Germany was frantically 
calling for an armistice and surely enough blood had been shed 
in this the greatest of wars. Accordingly, General Foch drew up 
the terms, complete and uncompromising in their severity. 
If Germany accepted them her military power was at an end. 
And the Germans did accept; there was nothing else to be done. 
Had they refused. General. Foch's big pincers would have closed 
up and ground them into powder and dust. 

The armistice was signed on the morning of November 11, 
1918, and the fighting actually stopped at eleven o'clock; the 
great war was practically over, and peace had come again to a 
sorely tried world. From the tower of the cathedral in Stras- 
burg once again there floated the beautiful tricolor of France; 
the lost provinces had been at last redeemed. 

Let us endeavor to realize the great, the almost supernatural 
efforts that France made to keep the world safe for democracy. 

In the first place, the principal battle-field was over northern 
France, the richest and most thickly populated section of the 
country. Every time the Germans advanced a foot, that much 
more of France was despoiled and ruined for at least a genera- 
tion to come; every time a mine was exploded, every time a 
cannon was fired, whether from the Teuton or the Allied side. 



418 [1917-1918 

that much more damage was committed on French property. 
Whole villages, towns, cities, were actually wiped out; to-day 
their former sites are nothing but a frightful desert. 

Out of a total home population of about 40,000,000 France 
sent to the colors 7,700,000 men. Approximately 1,400,000 
have been killed and 1,000,000 are disabled or missing. Re- 
member, too, that these are the young men, the breadwinners 
and workers of their generation. 

In spite of the early loss to the enemy of the rich iron regions 
and manufacturing district of northern France, the French were 
yet able to provide themselves with the necessary supplies of 
war material, and even to lend to their allies. For every 
100 rifles which France had at the beginning of the war she 
had 29,000 at the conclusion of hostilities. For every 100 
machine-guns, she had 7,000; the 300 pieces of heavy artillery 
in 1914 had been increased to 6,000 in 1918; the aeroplane 
production had increased in the ratio of 40 to 1. 

The cost of the war to France totaled $23,486,238,552. 
About five billions of this tremendous sum was raised by taxa- 
tion; in 1918 the citizens of France were paying into the state 
treasury an average of $50 per inhabitant. 

Smaller in population than the United States, or Germany, 
or Great Britain, or Austria, France suffered the brunt of the 
attack upon civilization. Had not the French Republic gone 
heart and soul into the struggle, giving of her very best in brains 
and men and treasure, Germany would have won the war; 
make no mistake about, that. Remember that Germany was 
ready and that Great Britain and America were not ready. If 
France had not stood in the gap the Hun hordes would have 
swarmed over Europe just as they did in the time of Attila 
and the clock of the world's progress would have been set back 
perhaps forever. Civilization owes a debt to France that can 
never, indeed, be fully paid, but which must never be forgotten. 

Vive la France! 



INDEX 



Abbaye, massacre at the, 284. 

Aeroplanes, 416. 

Albigenses, the, 87. 

Alexander of Russia, 335. 

Algerian frontier, 406. 

Alsace-Lorraine, 402, 403, 411. 

Angouleme, Duchess of, 367. 

Anne of Austria, 212, 215. 

Archbishop of Aries, 45. 

Argonne forests, 416. 

Armagnacs, the, 139. 

Armistice signed, 417. 

Army of occupation, 402. 

Artevelde, Jacob van, 119. 

Austria-Hungary, note to Ser- 
bia, 408; war declared, 409; 
begs for armistice, 417. 

Aviators, 414. 



B 



Bartholomew, St., massacre of, 

192. 
Bastile, capture of, 271. 
Bayard, Chevalier, 162; death 

of, 166. 
Beaufort, Cardinal, 144, 146. 
Beaujeu, Anne of, 156. 
Behm, the murderer, 192. 
BeKort, fort, 409. 
Belgium, neutraHty of, 409, 410; 

invasion of, 410; army, 410. 
Belzunce, Bishop, 248. 
Bethmann-Hollweg, 410. 
''Big Bertha," 413. 



Black Death, the, 116. 

Bois de Boulogne, 405. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, destroys 
the sections, 312; in Italy, 317; 
and Josephine, 319; and the 
Directory, 319, 322; in Egypt, 
321; first consul, 322; home life, 
324; emperor, 329. 

Boniface, Pope, 108. 

Bordeaux, French government 
transferred to, 411. 

Borodino, battle of, 357. 

Brinvilliers, the poisoner, 237. 

Brittany, Anne of, 157. 

Broussel, 224. 

Brunehault and Fredegonde, 11. 

Bulgaria defeated, 417. 

Burgundy, Fearless John of, 138; 
the Count of, 149; killed in bat- 
tle, 153. 



Caillaux, Joseph, 413. 

Calais, siege of, 122. 

Calendar, the republican, 314. 

Capet, Hugh, 50. 

Carnot, 317. 

Carrier, 305. 

Cavaignac, 391. 

Charlemagne, 26; wars with 
Saxons, ih.; at Roncesvalles, 
30; his life, 32; his tomb, 34. 

Charleroi, 411. 

Charles Martel, 19. 

Charles the Bald, 41. 

Charles the Fat, 46. 

Charles VII., 148. 



420 



INDEX 



Charles VIII., 156; wars of, 157; 

death, 160. 
Charles IX., remorse of, 194; 

death, ib. 
Charles X., 379; overthrown, 

383. 
Chateau-Thierry, 416. 
Chevreuse, Duchess of, 217. 
Childebert, 11. 
Cinq-Mars, 218. 
Clemenceau, George, 413. 
Clovis, King of the Franks, 4. 
Cohgni, Admiral, 188, 190. 
CoUot d'Herbois, 304. 
Commune, the, 402, 403. 
Concini, Marquis of, 213. 
Concorde, Place de la, 402. 
Constance, Queen, 61. 
Constantinople, 70. 
Convents closed, 406. 
Corday, Charlotte, 293; goes to 

Paris, 294; kills Marat, 295; 

execution, 296. 
Costume under Philip VI., 124. 
Coup d'Etat, 396. 
Court costume under Napoleon, 

341. 
Couthon, 306. 
Creci, battle of, 127. 
Crusades, the, 69, 70, 80, 84. 



D 



Damiens, execution of, 256. 
Danton, 299. 
Dauphin, the, 302. 
De Lesseps, Ferdinand, 405, 406. 
Delusions in France, 114. 
De Morny, 394. 
Der Tag, toast, 408. 
D'Estrees, Gabrielle, 207. 
Diamond Necklace, the, 266. 
Douamont, fort, 412. 
Dubarry, Countess of, 252. 
Dubois, the Abbe, 245. 
Pumouriez, General, 299. 



E 

Eiffel Tower, 404. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 78. 

Enghien, Duke of, 326. 

England, declares war on Ger- 
many, 410; army in France, 
411. 

Eudes, Count of Paris, 48. 

Eugenie, the Empress, 397. 



F 



Famine, 54, 164. 

Ferdinand, Archduke Francis, 
408. 

Feudal system, the, 49. 

Flagellants, the, 116. 

Foch, General, 415. 

Fouck, Rene, 414. 

France in 1223-1226, 90; state of, 
in 1775, 259; supernatural 
efforts, 417; cost of war to, 
418. 

Francis I., 170; meets Henry of 
England, 171; extravagance 
of, ih.; beaten at Pavia, 172. 

Franks, the, 1. 

French, revolution, 402, 403; 
war indemnity, 402, 403; gov- 
ernment war loan, 403; de- 
clares war on Germany, 409; 
forts, 409; army mobilized, 
411; government transferred 
to Bordeaux, 411. 

Freycinet, 402. 

"Frightfulness," Germany's miU- 
tary poHcy, 413. 

G 

GaUieni, General, 411. 
Gambetta, 402. 
Gaul, conquest of, 2. 
German, "War chest," 403; 
army of occupation, 402, 403; 



INDEX 



421 



miKtary party, 407, 408, 409; 
war on Russia, 409 ; on France, 
409; invades Belgium, 410; 
enters France, 411; siege of 
Verdun, 412; military policy, 
413; retreat, 417; calls for 
armistice, 417; military power 
at an end, 417. 

Gilded youth, the, 310. 

Girondists, the, 291. 

Godfrey of Bouillon, 70. . 

Gottschallc, 42. 

Great Lady, the, 156. 

Guises, the, 182, 185; Henry of, 
196; goes to Paris, ib.; mur- 
dered, 200. 

Guynemer, Georges, 414. 



H 



Hague, the, 408. 

Haussmann, Baron, 405. 

Heloise and Abelard, 82. 

Henry I., 64. 

Henry II., 179; death of, 182. 

Henry HI., 195; death of, 202. 

Henry IV., King of Navarre, 
203; fights at Ivry, ib.; enters 
Paris, 204; becomes a Cathohc, 
206; his poverty, 207; his mur- 
der, 211. 

Henry V. of England crowned 
King of France, 140; death 
of, ih. 

Hildebrand, Pope, 66. 

Hinckmar, the archbishop, 41. 

Hindenburg hne, 416, 417. 

Huguenots, the, 182. 



Interdict, an, 57, 87. 
Iron mask, man in the, 242. 
Isabella of Angouleme, 98. 
ItaHan offensive, 417. 



Jacobins, the, 280; crushed, 312. 
Jeanne of Flanders, 90. 
Jerusalem captured, 74. 
Jesuit society, 406. 
Jews, persecution of, 84, 115. 
Joanof Arc, 141; capture of, 144; 

burned, 146. 
Joffre, General, 411. 
Joseph, Kng of Spain, 352. 
Josephine, 344. 
Juana, Crazy, 166. 
JuHus Caesar, 2. 
Junkers, Prussian, 407, 408. 

K 

Kluck, General von, 411. 
Knights Templar, 111. 



Lafayette at Versailles, 274; 
under Charles X., 381; his Hfe, 
386. 

Law, John, 246. 

Leipsic, battle of, 362. 

Liege, defense of, 411. 

Lodi, battle of, 318. 

Lothair flies to Italy, 38. 

Louis the Fat, 74. 

Louis the Gentle, 35. 

Louis the Stammerer, 46. 

Louis, Saint, 95. 

Louis VII., death of, 83. 

Louis XL, 149; caught by Duke 
of Burgundy, 152; goes to 
Plessis les Tom's, 153; habits 
of, 154; death of, 155. 

Louis XIL, 61, 168. 

Louis XIIL, 212; death of, 220. 

Louis XIV., crowned, 230; his 
life, 231 ; hismarriage,232; wars, 
233; his extravagance, 234, 
235 ; persecutes the Huguenots, 
239; repeals the Edict of 
Nantes, 240; death of, 241. 



422 



INDEX 



Louis XV., 250; marries, 251; 
death of, 256. 

Louis XVI., 258; his reforms, 
261; his government, 270; 
wears cockade, 272; flies from 
Paris, 277; brought back to 
Paris, 279; trial of, 286; exe- 
cution, 290. 

Louis XVIIL, 366; flies, 370; re- 
turns, 378; invades Spain, 379. 

Louis Napoleon, 393; President, 
394; Emperor, 396; his war in 
Italy, 397; in Mexico, 398; at 
Sedan, 400; dies, 401. 

Louis Phillippe, 384; his govern- 
ment, 385; overthrown, 388. 

Ludendorff, General, 416. 

M 

Machine-guns, 416. 

Maintenon, Madame de, 233, 

241. 
Marat, Jean Paul, 291; his 

savagery, 292; his death, 295. 
Marchand, Captain, 407. 
Marie Antoinette, 258; her death, 

301. 
Marie Louise, 348. 
Marne, battle of, 411, 415. 
Mayor of the palace, 18. 
Mazarin, Cardinal, 224; death of, 

229. 
Medici, Catherine of, 186. 
Medici, Marie of, 212. 
Metternich, 361. 
Mirabeau in States-General, 268; 

defies the king, 270; death, 276. 
Molay, Jacques, 112. 
Mons, 411. 

Montford, Jeanne of, 120. 
Montfort, Simon of, 88. 
Montpensier, Madame de, 201. 
Moore, Sir John, 355. 
Moreau, 326. 
Moscow, burning of, 358, 



N 



Nancy, fort, 409. 

Napoleon crowned emperor, 329 
at AusterUtz, 333; at Jena, 334 
at Friedland, ih.; at Tilsit, 335 
improves France, 337, 338; re- 
proves a priest, 341; his tyran- 
ny, 342; divorces Josephine, 
347; marries Marie Louise, 348; 
invades Spain, 351; invades 
Russia, 357; retreats, 359; de- 
posed, 362; at Elba, 364; re- 
turns to France, 369; invades 
Belgium, 371; fights at Water- 
loo, ib.; abdicates, 373; at St. 
Helena, 374; dies, 376. 

Napoleon the Third, 405. 

Ney, 370. 

Normans, the sea rovers, 36. 



Oliver Daim, 153. 
Orleans, the Regent, 244. 



Pacifists, 413. 

Panama Canal, 406. 

Paris, government removed, 411; 
shelling of, 413. 

Parhaments, the uprising of, 262. 

Pasha, Bolo, 413. 

Pepin, 16; King of France, 21. 

Pestilence, 54. 

Peter the Hermit, 70. 

PhiHp Augustus, 84. 

PhiHp Equality, 286. 

Philip I., 66. 

PhiHp VI., 119; dissipation of, 
124; career of, ib. 

PhiHp the Handsome, 107; his 
laws, ib.; his wars, 108; exe- 
cutes the Knights Templar, 
112. 

Pichegru, 326. 



INDEX 



423 



Poitiers, battle of, 127. 
Poitiers, Diane of, 179. 
Pompadour, Marquise of, 252. 
Propaganda, German, 413. 
Provisional government, 390. 
Prussia, King of, 334. 

R 

Recamier, Madame de, 342. 

Reformation, the, 178. 

Reign of Terror, 402. 

Relics, oaths on, 61. 

Religious orders of men, 406. 

RepubHc, the new, 401. 

Republic, Third, 402. 

Rethel, fort, 409. 

RicheHeu, 213; his skill, 214; at- 
tempts to murder him, 215; ill- 
ness of, 219; death of, 220; 
progress of France under, 222. 

Robert the Devil, 63. 

Robert the King, 57. 

Robespierre, 298; leader of the 
Jacobins, 299; convention of, 
306. 

Rome, the King of, 349. 

Russian revolution, 415. 



S 



Saint-Gobain forest, 413. 
Saladin the Saracen, 84. 
Sciarra Colonna, 110. 
Serbia, Austria declares war 

against, 409. 
Sevastopol, 397. 
Sforza the Blackamoor, 161. 
Soissons, 8. 

Sombreuil, Governor, 285. 
Sorcery, 114. 
Spandau, citadel of, 403. 
Spanish hatred of the French, 

354. 



Stael, Madame de, 342. 
States-General, meeting of, 269. 
Strasburg, statue of, 404. 
Strife between nobles and Church, 

5. 
Suez Canal, digging, 405. 
Suger, the Abbot, 77. 
Swiss, massacre of the, 282. 



Taille, the, 260. 

Talleyrand, 386. 

Temple, 109. 

Thiers, President, 402. 

Toul, fort, 409. 

Tours, the battle of, 20. 

Tower, Julius, 403. 

Treaty of Peace, German-French, 

402. 
Tristan I'Ermite, 153. 
Tuileries invaded, 280. 
Turkey defeated, 417. 

V 

Valois, the Countess of, 266. 
Vaux, fort, 412. 

Verdun, fort, 409; siege of, 412. 
Vergniaud, 291 ; death of, 302. 
Vezelai, council at, 80. 
Vochen, Sir Edward, 410. 
Voltaire and philosophers, 256. 

W 

Wagram, battle of, 344. 
War loan, government, 403. 
Washington Monument, 404. 
Waterloo, battle of, 371. 
William the Conqueror, 65. 
WiUiam II., Emperor, 408, 416. 
World, the end of, 54. 
World War, 408-418. 
World's Fair, 1889, 404. 



THE END 



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